The best reason to see Richard Linklater's wholly unnecessary but highly enjoyable remake of The Bad News Bears is Billy Bob Thornton, who's doing a PG-13 version of his Bad Santa.

| May 13, 2014

Fortunately almost everyone acquits himself coolly and admirably.

| May 13, 2014

Billy Bob Thornton has proven he can do pretty much anything, but he simply does not look haggard, washed-up or miserable enough to be a believable Morris Buttermaker, the role Walter Matthau immortalized.

| May 13, 2014

It's no Bad Santa, but it's fun.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 13, 2014

This hasn't the advantage of seeming so new, nor so shocking. It mixes cute and crass with a dollop of social critique.

| Jul 1, 2006

Despite the lack of a vital air-punch from a curiously flat finale, there's much to love and laugh at.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 14, 2005

A pleasant surprise out of leftfield.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 9, 2005

There are many lingerings over communal feelings other directors might pass through more quickly to get to the next giggle or guffaw more efficiently.

Full Review | Aug 4, 2005

Billy Bob Thornton is the best weapon against cute that a kid baseball movie ever had.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 28, 2005

More irksome is the ordained focus on plot undulation and simplistic motivation, as if nobody remembered that the first film was a social satire.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2005

That Linklater manages to make his remake as affecting as it is -- and there are moments of pure goofball zaniness scattered throughout -- is only surprising to those who haven't been following his sublimely wild-carding career.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2005

Bad news.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 23, 2005

Kids are more precocious today than they were in 1976, while audiences are harder to shock or to enlist in an underdog story, but you wouldn't know it from the creaky, unnecessary remake of Bad News Bears.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2005

At least Linklater isn't just picking the bones of his forebears; he honors them as they deserve.

| Jul 23, 2005

But you don't watch Bad News Bears for the action out on the diamond. You hang out with that hangdog coach so you can catch every slurry, sour-mouthed retort coming out of his mouth. Now that's color commentary.

| Jul 22, 2005

The movie is fun, though not great, and Billy Bob rules.

| Jul 22, 2005

The material is so solid and Thornton so tailor-made that the movie almost gets by.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 22, 2005

If you missed The Bad News Bears the first time around, this one might be worth catching just for Thornton; otherwise, it's just extra innings on a game that's already played out.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 22, 2005

Perhaps someday French auteurists will be able to figure out how Bad News Bears fits into the cinematic oeuvre of Richard Linklater.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 22, 2005

The kids in this knowing, tirelessly belligerent retread are as coarse and obnoxious as they ever were, maybe more so. And therein lies the problem.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 22, 2005