Walter Matthau,
Tatum O'Neal,
Vic Morrow,
Joyce Van Patten,
Ben Piazza
... see more 
The success this underdog comedy from director Michael Ritchie almost single-handedly spawned the kids' sports film boom of the 1980s and '90s. When beer-breathed ex-minor-league ball player and profe... read more
Directed by: Michael Ritchie
Release Date: April 7, 1976
DVD Release Date: February 12, 2002
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Stats: 1,027 reviews
Your Rating
Flixster Reviews (1,027)
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November 7, 2011The Bad News Bears is one of the classic baseball comedies. With a great cast of actors, director Michael Ritchie directs a fun film that is very funny. The Bad News Bears remains of the classic baseball comedies, and the film boasts an impressive cast including Tatum O'Neil who ... read more
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January 3, 2011A classic baseball movie, I love the ending. This movie has that 70s realistic quality, it's both dramatic and funny too. I really like it.
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January 30, 2010Setting the stage for great child-oriented sports' comedies that are funny to everyone like the Mighty Ducks and The Sandlot.
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January 13, 2008I've been surrounded by baseball my whole life -- played on teams, watched friends play, follow major leagues now. So this film was very nostalgic for me. Walter Matthau plays a drunk pool cleaner who is paid to manage a little league team for a bunch of misfits who couldn't get ... read more
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April 1, 2007All the usual sports cliches are on display, but it's got Walter Matthau, and that's good enough for me.
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Critic Reviews
August 3, 2008
Jay Cocks, TIME Magazine
March 14, 2007
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Michael Ritchie keeps his dead-end cynicism in check and produces a genuinely funny comedy about a Little League team managed by a lovably drunken Walter Matthau. Full Review
May 9, 2005
Vincent Canby, New York Times
[Ritchie] keeps the sentimentality in check most of the time and obtains first-rate performers from his miniature cast all of the time. Full Review
October 23, 2004
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
[Ritchie] directs scenes for comedy even in the face of his disturbing material and that makes the movie all the more effective; sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we can't, and the movie's working bes... Full Review
August 3, 2008
Richard Luck, Film4
If all kids' movies were like this, you wouldn't need to drag parents to the multiplexes. Full Review
March 14, 2007
TV Guide's Movie Guide
This charming, funny film takes a gentle poke at Little League baseball and the American obsession with winning. Full Review
May 26, 2006
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
Matthau's perfectly restrained, brilliantly comic performance holds it together. Full Review
January 26, 2006
Time Out
Amiably engrossing satire on the 'win ethic' that offers a take-it-or-leave-it approach to its serious points about enforcing precociousness on kids, but consistently delights with its panoramic comic... Full Review
June 3, 2005
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
Remains the best film ever made about kids and sports. Full Review
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The Bad News Bears
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