Tripping through The Bad News Bears

The great, the bad, the ugly, the harmlessly nondescript and the nice try -- and why it all matters so much

Hollywood sequels that fail to live up to the original movie weave a tired old tale, but there is something particularly wretched about the follow-ups to the galactic brilliance of The Bad News Bears.

Every few years, I rewatch the original. Everything in that movie works, except for how badly — how very badly — Tanner Boyle’s presumably inherited racism has aged. Otherwise, each time I return to the film, I expect to be betrayed by my memories, only to come away even more impressed. The Bad News Bears is stunningly good.

I can make a bulletproof case for The Bad News Bears in all kinds of ways. But while it would be easy to share virtue after virtue of the original, I’m going to make that case today by showing how the next three movies to bear its name — and the TV series — failed its legacy.

All kinds of talent stands behind the first two BNBs. Released in 1976, The Bad News Bears was directed by Michael Ritchie (The Candidate), written by Bill Lancaster (the son of Burt Lancaster, Bill won a Writers' Guild award for this script) and produced by Stanley R. Jaffe (Kramer vs. Kramer). Released 14 months later, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training was directed by Michael Pressman, written by Paul Brickman (Risky Business) and produced by Leonard Goldberg (War Games).

In the movie world, the credits don’t always accurately reflect the impact of the filmmakers. I don’t know who was most responsible for the fates of these films. But what’s quickly apparent is how badly the second set of filmmakers misunderstood why the first set were so successful. And what’s so startling is that they missed something so obvious.