[This entry was written in an airport on a failing battery.]
Remakes have been a major feature of the ‘00s. It is easy to question the creativity of filmmakers, when it’s perhaps more appropriate to lament the gutlessness of financers. Artistically, one may cite many reasons to do a remake: original was a good idea told shoddily, technology has improved, the story needs updating for a new generation…laziness. Then there’s always the nostalgia factor, the sense (amongst the moneymen) that an audience is more likely to buy into a movie with a recognizable title and a familiar plot. It provides the comfort of the familiar found in a sequel, but with the “promise” of greater importance.
Most recent remakes fall under the horror genre, and somewhat less often action and thriller. These are seen as easily repeatable forms. One sees a lot less comedy being remade, probably because it is much harder to repeat jokes. Hence also fewer comedy sequels, and comedy franchises generally – there are of course exceptions to this.
Still, a remake of The Bad News Bears was put out in the middle of the remake decade, though it dropped that stuffy “The” like Fast & Furious to become simply Bad News Bears. This is a remake of the least essential type, one masterminded by studio accountant geniuses who noted much love for the 1976 original, and anticipated (perhaps incorrectly) audience nostalgia. Even then, it is an odd proposition to remake The Bad News Bears, as basically every underdog sports comedy in the interim 30 years has been an unofficial remake of The Bad News Bears. That raises the issue of distinguishing a remake from the rest of the sports comedy market, so that it’s more than just a generic baseball formula entry with a familiar title and names.
Bearing the onus of championing this effort, and it pains me to say this, is director Richard Linklater, a generally much more interesting filmmaker than such a bland, mainstream remake would suggest. He’s the guy who defined his generation with Slacker and Dazed and Confused, who mastered the tricky romantic genre with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. He was even fresh off a similar mainstream comedy about a lovable loser adult connecting with lovable loser children, School of Rock. And that’s not to mention the surrealistic portentousness of something like Waking Life.
So what is Richard Linklater even doing on Bad News Bears? Most likely he’s doing damage control, realizing such a remake will get made one way or another, and it’s his duty as a right-aged fan who grew up with the original to make the result as inoffensive as possible. The same can go for screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, fresh off of the gleefully cynical Xmas-terpiece Bad Santa. With a potentially idiosyncratic team like this, they can at least preserve something of the first film’s casual vulgarity and iconoclasm, something the official sequels never managed.
Joining Ficarra and Requa from Bad Santa is Billy Bob Thornton, taking over the role of Morris Buttermaker from the original’s Walter Matthau. Casting Thornton is the most intelligent move in all of Bad News Bears; he is distinct from Matthau’s on-screen persona, yet Thornton brings the same sense of laconic, breezy slobbishness and meanness. And drunkenness. Add to that now an air of womanizing, a Billy Bob special (the man did date Angelina Jolie for a very long time). Thornton has an astounding skill at being more likable than the characters he plays ought to be. Chalk that up partly to audiences’ desires to side with the bad boy, the person we wouldn’t cheer on in real life. Thornton also has the ability to underplay the central emotional beats, giving his characters definite humanity without ever beating it into the ground.
If Thornton is the best part of Bad News Bears, and an example of mostly smart updating of something that never needed to be updated, the rest of the movie does not follow suit. Rather than get lost in a sea of similar narratives, the remake resolves that issue by being as much like The Bad News Bears as it possibly can. Not only is the central story the same (washed-up baseballer coaches a team of Little League misfits, gets them to the championship), but every story beat, hell, every specific baseball play, follows the 1976 outline slavishly. This means there is no point to recount the plot or message or anything, when I’ve already done that.
The exactitude of the Bad News Bears recreation often boils down to specific shots, reaching nearly 1998 Psycho levels of pointlessness. And not only are the titular Bears mostly the same characters, with the same personas, but they even look the same. Without prompting, I could instantly peg Timmy Deters as the new Tanner Boyle, long before he opens his maw to say rude things. The same goes for the rest of the players: Toby Whitewood (Ridge Canipe), Mike Engleberg (Brandon Craggs), Timmy Lupus (Tyler Patrick Hones), Ahmad Abdul Rahim (Kenneth Harris), the Agilar brothers (Carlos y Emmanuel Estrada). That’s not to say their performances are anywhere near as sincere as in the first; they just look right.
But where Bad News Bears does not copy thoughtlessly, it adds just as thoughtlessly. A significant number of mostly ornamental details have been altered (we’ll get to those), for seemingly no reason except because they could do it, and it slightly justifies the film’s status as a remake. Most apparent are several new members of the Bears. Let’s see, there’s Prem Lahari (Aman Johal) – despite the name and the new ethnicity, he’s essentially Ogilvie, love of stats and all. More distinctly, there’s also an Armenian, Garo Daragabrigadien (Jeffrey Tedmori).
Oh, and there’s Matt Hooper, which is an unacknowledged and pointless Jaws shout out (Troy Gentile). While most of the changes are a chance to increase the team’s ethnic diversity (even as they lose the immortal “Jews, spics, niggers” litany – cinematic blasphemy!), Hooper is a chance to add a whole new realm of diversity – he’s a paraplegic! He’s in a wheelchair! This could be either disgustingly twee, or disgustingly offensive. They err for the latter.
The stated goal of the new Bad News Bears is to play on political correctness and race politics, something the writers saw as the primary purpose of The Bad News Bears. So it’s been constructed with a (largely failed) attempt to highlight the distinctions between the ‘70s and ’00s. This being the entire focus of the new effort, is becomes little more than Bad Santa lite, a PG-13 effort to renew that film’s misanthropic worldview for a slightly younger audience.
And just who is the target audience of this Bad News Bears? Given its PG-13, that’s a bit more adult than most child sports comedies tend to go. In fact, Bad News Bears fully capitalizes upon the PG-13 rule that one must never utter “fuck” more than once, but “shit” can be said indefinitely with no further repercussions. Without exaggerating, I’d wager “shit” gets uttered over 100 times, in a calculated effort to out-crass the first. (Kudos to the filmmakers, for it’s not most who’d retain this part of The Bad News Bears, even if it makes the new movie alienating to almost everyone.)
So the swear quotient is way up, as otherwise the new movie features far more off-color comments and discussions. It’s all somewhat calculated, skewed comic notions tossed in with intent to offend. One can see why families rejected the movie, limiting its appeal mostly to older audiences familiar with the first. And with this new emphasis upon filth over all else, the tonal function of Bad News Bears modifies. Despite the surface narrative, this is in fact not a sports movie. It’s a comedy, in a sports milieu. Most of the new details – I swear, I’m getting to those – serve to fashion new jokes, or do reversals on old jokes. The degree of Bad News Bears’ success or failure is thus mostly whether or not you find it funny. And as it is laconic, off-kilter, oddly paced (without echoing the particular rhythms of the 1976 version), it’s surely not everyone’s comedy.
That at least leaves the original drama mostly untouched. Buttermaker still has a crisis of friendship and faux-fatherhood with Amanda Whurlitzer (Sammi Kane Kraft, a decent real life pitcher, but not a whit of Tatum O’Neil’s anything else). Buttermaker still questions the idea of competitiveness versus playing baseball. All that’s still there, unadorned, and while it’s not messed with, it isn’t as effective as before. Their heart wasn’t in this angle, no doubt, and without The Bad News Bears as reference, it’s entirely possible one could miss the message of sportsmanship this movie still ostensibly possesses.
If nothing’s been changed on the dramatic front, how does that happen? Despite the semi-indie credentials behind the camera, Bad News Bears IS a studio effort – low budget by Paramount standards ($35 million, the same as it grossed, the little underachiever), but still a studio effort. That means a generic professional sheen to everything, a proliferation of moving cameras and blandly perfect lighting, etc., etc. This is in contrast to the original’s ramshackle nature, which more wholly jibed with the attitude of the Bears themselves. It was lackadaisical, with a faded veneer of springtime Little League, whereas this entry feels like any other competent movie with a wide release.
As befits that shift in tone (akin to a song cover done well, just not right), observe the changes in rival Yankee coach Roy…Bullock. The change of last name away from Turner is one of the most gleefully pointless switches. Greg Kinnear plays Roy as a darker – no, wait, lighter – version of his stressed motivational speaker from Little Miss Sunshine. Roy is an all-American, but with intended insidious flaws deep down. In The Bad News Bears, this manifests itself in the final game as Roy slapped his son on the pitcher’s mound in full public view. To “update” the movie, now Roy’s son merely trips when Roy pushes him. It doesn’t hold nearly the same weight, as do none of Roy’ intended villainies. He’s really just a comic butt of Buttermaker’s shenanigans, a casualty of the film’s slide from narrative to gag-driven comedy.
There are other lamentable changes necessitated by political correctness, ones that no one was apparently pleased with during filming. Take for example Buttermaker’s beloved and iconic Budweiser beer cans, switched here to the fictional Goldweiser. Because beer companies, 30 years later, no longer wants to associate themselves with a drunken antihero. (Compare that to Breaking Training, where Budweiser was promoted from a product to the plot prime mover.)
Then there’s the end of the movie, where Buttermaker shares his beer stash with the Bears upon their championship loss. (That loss remains in this entry same as ever, but not without testing groups complaining that the Bears ought to win this time – which totally misses the point, even now, stupidly myopic parents of America.) Of course, in 2005 you simply can’t encourage a drunken pre-teen beer riot, not in a PG-13 movie. I’ll let Tanner speak for me here, as he sums up everything wrong with the new “solution: “Non-alcoholic? What’s the damn point?” Indeed.
But I promised a listing of the other arbitrary changes made, large and small. With nothing else to say, here goes:
Buttermaker is no longer a has-been from the minor leagues, he’s a has-been from the major leagues (pitched one inning for the Mariners when they were an expansion team). This makes no difference. He’s also no longer a pool cleaner, but an exterminator, which is an opportunity for a new string of jokes wherein he exposes his baseball team to carcinogens on a regular basis, and carries diseased raccoons in the beer cooler. It’s tasteless and all, but when Bad News Bears commits to such grossness, it has its own identity.
Sponsoring the Bears’ inclusion in this Little League they don’t belong in is Toby’s mother now, Liz Whitewood (Marcia Gay Harden). This is done a) because “overambitious working mother” is “more ‘00s” than “neglectful father,” and b) so Billy Bob Thornton has somebody else to schtupp. Marcia hardens his gay, as it were, though like most new diversions, there is not much ultimate point to this scene outside of its own confines. It doesn’t even affect Toby much.
The team’s sponsor is no longer Chico’s Bail Bonds, it’s Bo Peep’s Gentleman’s Club. They even feint at replaying the old Chico’s gag. Sure, the Bo Peep’s reveal is amusing, but it’s also the kind of change which seems irreverent to the first.
What else? Oh, lotsa little things.
The League no longer celebrates in a Mexican restaurant, but a German restaurant.
Amanda no longer sells star maps, she sells clothes in a swap meet. (This shift necessitates the creation of a vast swap meet set, no doubt blowing a lot of the increased budget on unnecessary additions.)
Ahmad’s hero is now not Hank Aaron, but Marc McGuire. They mention this fact, to show they’ve changed something, then never do anything with it again. That’s inefficient.
Kelly Leak (Jeffrey Davies) has an artificially expanded romantic subplot with Amanda, which adds nothing (a repeated refrain). Kelly is so unimpressive here, hence his delayed mention. At least his newfound “punk” identity frees up the music supervisor, allowing an extended montage to a lovely song by a band called “Bloodfarts.” That’s a band created for the movie, and an example of the new humor it brings to the table.
Despite the camera moves telegraphing it in advance, Lupus no longer makes a major outfield play in the final game. That play still happens (it’s been foreshadowed), only now it’s wheelchair-bound Matt Hooper catching the ball, in the only scene where they have the audacity (or whatever) to show this guy on the field.
And Tanner no longer informs the Yankees post-lost that they can insert their trophies into their anuses; this is done by Prem. Then Tanner says something different, simply to point out that a change has been made. What point all this serves, I dunno.
That’s about it for this movie. For people who’ve seen the original, there’s nothing new here except for changes that simply question their own existence, and one-liners about Helen Keller and chupacabras and the Tooth Fairy. Really, it’s a combination of several other movies that work better on their own: The Bad News Bears (obviously), Bad Santa, School of Rock. Depending upon your mood, any of those serve the job better. Still, they did what they could remaking The Bad News Bears. It just should never have happened.
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Bad News Bears (1976)
• No. 2 The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)
• No. 3 The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)
No comments:
Post a Comment