Bad News Bears

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Bad News Bears' classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Bad News Bears completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 18 December 2005.

Overall comments and recommendations

Bad News Bears is a film about a group of young adolescent misfits learning to play baseball from a degenerate coach. Adults who enjoy humour based on obscenities, insults and sexual innuendoes may be entertained by this film; otherwise the film has little to offer in terms of entertainment.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Bad News Bears contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Morris Buttermaker (Billy Bob Thornton), one time major league pitcher, and now alcohol-guzzling, woman-chasing, pest-control exterminator has been hired by Liz Whitewood (Marcia Gay Harden) to coach the Bad News Bears, a team of little league baseball misfits. As a result of Buttermaker’s drunken and lazy coaching efforts, the Bears are totally outclassed at their first game of the season, and as a result forfeit the match after a few innings. Somewhat regretful of his bad behaviour, Buttermaker begins to put effort into his coaching and the team slowly begins to improve. Buttermaker also introduces into the team Amanda Whurlitzer (Sammi Kane Kraft), a girl with a fast pitching arm, and Kelly Leak (Jeffrey Davis) a rebellious skate punk with the ability to hit the ball out of the park every time.

Slowly the Bears begin to win games and make their way to the finals. But as the bears win more and more games, Buttermaker begins to turn the season into a grudge match between himself and coach of the Yankees, a clean-cut, smug, ridiculing individual named Roy Bullock (Greg Kinnear). Buttermaker must make some decisions about the directions he wants to take his young team.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

The film contains some infrequent mild violence between adults, such as when Buttermaker and Bullock attempt to attack each other and are restrained by other adults. There is a quite disturbing scene where Bullock loses control and verbally abuses his own son, then physically attacks him, pushing him to the ground in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Much of the other violence is between children, including:

• children put each other in headlocks and throw each to the ground, punching and kicking each other
  
• a group of children from the Yankees team lock a member from the Bears team in a portable toilet and rock the toilet forwards and backwards until it falls over
  
• the Yankees pick up another Bears member and toss him over a fence into a patch of mud
  
• one of the Yankees runs over the top of Amanda knocking her to the ground
  
• one of the Bears punches the Yankee in the face and an all-out brawl ensues
  
• one of the Bears arrives at practice with a black eye and cut lip, a consequence of fighting at school
  

The following elements are of concern in respect of the violence depicted between children:

• it is portrayed as ‘cool’ul>
  
• never at any time is advice given that language not violence can be used to resolve conflict
  
• no child is ever reprimanded for using physical violence
  
• violence is presented as the norm
  
• the smaller the attacker and the greater the odds, the more glamourised the use of violence becomes
  
• while the intent of the filmmaker may have been to gain laughs from the children engaging in acts of violence against each other, some susceptible young viewers may view them as being a reasonable example of what to do when placed in a similar situation.

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

The above mentioned violent scenes, particularly Bullock attacking his own son, could threaten or upset younger children. There are no scary visual images in the movie.

Over the age of eight

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Although there are no scenes in this movie that older children would find scary, many children could react negatively to the violence depicted between children, either in fearing themselves to potentially be a victim of such violence or in seeing the movie as a justification of bullying behaviour and that it is ‘cool’ to use violence to solve problems.

Sexual references

The film contains several sexual references including, including:

• after Buttermaker states “I never thought I’d say it, but look at the arsehole at second base.”, an attractive looking women is shown standing at second base, wearing tight shorts and bending over
  
• Buttermaker says to one of the Bears (referring to having sex with an underage girl) “You know she said she was eighteen.”
  
• one of the Bears says, in relation to a team member, “I heard he got his teacher pregnant.”
  
• when the Bears tie a game Buttermaker states, “A tie is not like kissing your sister; it’s more like kissing a really hot step sister.”
  
• Buttermaker states, in reference to the game of baseball, “Baseball’s hard. You can love it but it doesn’t always love you back. It’s like dating a German chick.”
  
• Liz Whitewood refers to Buttermaker as a “sexy scumbag.”
  
• the slogan on the back of the Bears uniforms is a sexual reference to a strip club “Bo-Peep’s Gentleman’s Club.”
  
• Amanda, in reference to Buttermaker going out with her mother states “You must have had a big one… I don’t know what else my mum saw in you”.

Nudity and sexual activity

The film contains no explicit nuudity, but does contain frequent images of scantily clad women, including:

• numerous scenes in which women are wearing very low cut tops exposing most of their breasts, extremely short shorts and exposed midriffs
  
• Buttermaker takes his team to an American restaurant called “Hooters” where the waitresses wear extremely revealing costumes
  
• The Bears’ cheerleaders are women from the strip club “Bo-Peeps Gentleman’s Club”. Their costumes are revealing and their dance steps very suggestive.
  
• Buttermaker sleeps with Liz Whitewood, a mother of a team member. He is shown walking out of Liz’s bedroom where he is confronted by her son

Use of substances

Buttermaker consumes alcohol continuously throughout the film, and is depicted as intoxicated several times. Examples include:

• When Buttermaker arrives for his first coaching lesson, he tips out half a can of non-alcoholic beer refilling it with bourbon
  
• in another scene Buttermaker become so drunk while coaching that he passes out on the playing field surrounded by empty cans of beer, at which point one of the Bears steals his wallet
  
• members of the Bears mix martinis for Buttermaker to drink
  
• Buttermaker states that bourbon tastes like candy
  

Other drug references include:

• Buttermaker continuously smokes large cigars.
  
• Buttermaker tells one of the Bears never to smoke crack, telling them that one smoke of it and they will wake up in jail “with an inmate branding his initials on your arse”
  
• When the Bears visit the restaurant “Hooters” they sing along to the song Cocaine.

Coarse language

The film contains continuous coarse language, including:

• shit
  
• arsehole
  
• dumbarse
  
• bullshit
  
• Jesus Christ
  
• bitch
  
• Bastard
  

Much of the coarse language is used as put downs and verbal assaults, including:

• What the hell is wrong with you dipshits
  
• Put my foot up your arse
  
• Kiss my arse
  
• You can take your crappy trophies and shove them up your arse
  
• Buttermaker tells one of the boys that his father should be “kicked in the nuts so he can’t father another little brat like you”
  
• you guys look like a shit I took .

The movie's message

The film contains more negative messages than positive. Any positive messages revolve around Buttermaker coming to terms with his shortcomings and placing the needs and feeling of the Bears above his own. Parents could point out the manner in which the Bears persevere against overwhelming odds.

However, parents may also wish to discuss with their children the real world consequences of using violence to resolve conflict and that the offensive language used by Buttermaker and the Bears, can be socially unacceptable and can lead to negative consequences. Parents may also wish to discuss how the female characters are portrayed as objects of sexual desire.