When I was about 7, my parents took me and my sister to Florida. We spent most of our time in the Sunshine State playing on the beach or swimming in the pool, and we went to Walt Disney World, but one day, it was pissing down with rain and my folks didn't want to spend an afternoon cooped up in a hotel room with two squirrely kids, so they took us to the movies. We saw The Bad News Bears. And naturally, the unique circumstances under which I first saw the movie, not forgetting the fact that it's a great little flick, have made it one of my childhood favorites, especially as I was the complete opposite of athletically inclined as a kid, as were the Bears themselves.
The just-released remake looks like it might actually be halfway decent, but as Charles Taylor pointed out in this article, one wonders how the original's deeply '70s sensibilities will translate into post-millenial Hollywood bet-hedging sensitivity. Smoking, drunk driving, profanity and racial epithets -- perpetrated by preadolescent kids, mind you -- were played for laughs in the first movie. (The budding sociopath Tanner, who described his fellow Bears with this entry's title, was my favorite character, naturally.)
As per usual, my "no movies in the theater" rule is holding sway, and with Bad News Bears, that goes double as the large number of kids in the cast will sucker many parents into thinking it's a children's movie.
But there's always DVD...
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