PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 7/26/05)

How many times can a movie use words like "shit" and "ass" without risking an R rating? If my calculations are correct, the new Bad News Bears remake gets away with 52 separate variations on those two expletives alone, with such colorful alternates as "pecker," "fag," "son of a bitch," "dickweed" and "bastard" thrown in for good measure. As far as the MPAA is concerned, the foul-mouthed movie still fits squarely in PG-13 territory, provided that it doesn't drop the F-bomb (the only reason the far family-friendlier Billy Elliot got stuck with an R).

Just how strongly should parents be cautioned about Bad News Bears? Consider this review from one preteen attending the advance screening: "I like the guy who speaks bad language and throws the trash." His mom went pale. Little more than a prank from School of Rock director Richard Linklater and Bad Santa scribes Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Bears is the closest thing to a pop-music "cover" Hollywood has to offer. Starring Bad Santa himself, Billy Bob Thornton, in the role originated by Walter Matthau, the new Bears takes the sufficiently raunchy original and tweaks it ever so slightly, subversively testing the boundaries of the PG-13 rating to see just how much it can stand (as seen in such minor adjustments as Coach Buttermaker's newfound interest in strippers and transferring the team's victory dinner from McDonald's to Hooters).

Linklater's riff on the irreverent sports classic is so redundant that you could find more differences between Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho and Hitchcock's original than you would between the 1976 and 2005 versions of Bears. In both films, a hopeless drunk agrees to coach a team of little-league rejects, serving as the worst possible example to his impressionable young charges while unexpectedly transforming the band of runts into the league's second-place team.

So why bother to repeat a movie when a perfectly acceptable version already exists? It's not like Linklater and company bring anything especially fresh or insightful to the film (they even ditch the underage smoking and water down the beer-drinking finale by going non-alcoholic). Sure, it's a pleasure to watch Thornton stretch his legs in Matthau's role, but I miss Tatum O'Neal as his firebrand daughter. Besides, Thornton's basically just repeating his Bad Santa performance anyway. Here's my theory: The Bad News Bears is the one kids’ movie everyone in Hollywood looks to as the kind of project no one could get away with making today, and that's the reason Linklater went ahead and made it. —Peter Debruge