A film was released that got everything beautifully, hilariously and even painfully right.

| May 30, 2018

At a time when sports movies can't be just sports movies anymore, it's both startling and soothing to take a second look at Michael Ritchie's Little League comedy The Bad News Bears.

| May 30, 2018

Surprisingly, improbably, The Bad News Bears is the year's funniest movie.

| Aug 3, 2008

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.

| Mar 14, 2007

An extremely funny adult-child comedy film.

| Mar 14, 2007

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 invention.

| Jan 26, 2006

Remains the best film ever made about kids and sports.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 3, 2005

[Ritchie] keeps the sentimentality in check most of the time and obtains first-rate performers from his miniature cast all of the time.

| May 9, 2005

[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 best when we're silent.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 23, 2004