The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, 1977 - ★★

thunt’s review published on Letterboxd: I watched Bad News Bears two bad news bears the return, something like that, and it was really god awful. It was God awful, though in still an interesting way, because looking back on it from 2025 and understanding that the whole first half of the movie, mainly is about how the kids trick their parents that they're going on a baseball trip, then go in one van. I'm not sure where they got it, driven by one of the young kids, who then tries to avoid police quietly check them in and out of hotels, restaurants and other places where a gang of about 12 children would obviously be noticed, especially without their parents. What's great about this early section is that it's not treated sensationalistically as it would be now with cuts back to the parents' house and worried conversations between mom and dad, where is our little baseball player? Oh, we shouldn't have yelled at him. Things like that don't happen in this movie. The kids just run wild. I read some reviews that compared it to our gang with the little rascals, and I could see that it is kind of a movie that takes place inside the kids reality, which is so interesting because the first movie was so much about the drunken coach, butter maker, brilliantly played by Walter Matthau, and his interactions with the kids. So instead, for the first half of the movie, there is no coach, so there is no drunken interactions and cursing and things that make sense. It's just kids going wild on the road and trying to quote, win one for the looper, after they watch just the key scene from Ronald Reagan's movie where he says, win one for the Gipper. The second half of the movie is more like the first movie. William duvain, seemingly fresh out of Vietnam, he refuses to wear anything but his army jacket in every scene. Who I see in so many movies later on, with his gray hair, is here, young and looking crazy, like the guy from Cobra Kai. He's a sensei to these children, because one of the children is his son. He even seemingly moves back to wherever they live after living in Texas and being their temporary coach. William Devane looks like he's in the wrong movie, the constant Vietnam type reference of his jacket, the strange bell bottoms general out of place this and his creepy smile. Never make him. Make you comfortable with him as the coach. Despite the continued competition, the bears Get it together and play several innings in the Astrodome. Truly the best parts of the film. The Astrodome is horribly ugly with cement walls on the outside and colored the beautiful color of gray, not even silver, the inside looks like a warehouse with the horrible green astroturf floor and the bizarre lighted ceiling, but still, They let the bad news boys play there, and they have some nice baseball action in the end of the film in the astro dome. Kind of makes it worth it. I don't know if there was three films. The first film, boys on the run, no good. The second film, William Devane trains him up in Vietnam style, no good. And the third would have been cool if it was Vietnam style, if he had, like, put the boys through it. But there's really no reference to nom other than his jacket. And the third film The boys play in the Astrodome, that part is pretty good, all in all, terrible film compared to the first. None of the classical music, none of the silent, beautiful baseball shots of the terrible boys trying to play the almost impossible game. Instead, the boys are are claiming that they are winners and that they're the team from California that's here to play in the Astrodome, and all the parts about them being really lousy baseball players and more about their character, their cursing, their inappropriate language, all of which are horrifying to modern audiences, but make the first film seem like authentic in the way that children talk, children curse and use bad language, not even knowing what it is probably most of the time, and Bad News Bears. The original is certainly full of that, as well as great music, which this one lacked. Thanks for reading. You. Transcribed by otter.ai