Bad News Bears
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: July 22, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
11
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
50
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
Linklater, whose intimate "Before Sunset" was an art-house wonder last year, proved he could make mainstream money with "School of Rock." With Bad News Bears, he proves he can waste it, too. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Thornton swills the Matthau role with the unslakable thirst of W.C. Fields and idiosyncratic sexuality of Johnny Depp. So this is what Bad Santa does during the off-season. Read full review
50
USA TodayMike Clark
The material is so solid and Thornton so tailor-made that the movie almost gets by. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
For all the updated riffs and personal noodling, it's best when it doesn't stray too far from the original material. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
Merely a passably amusing excuse to pass a couple of hours in an air-conditioned theater. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The most grievous flaw in Richard Linklater's remake of Michael Ritchie's 1976 misfit juvenile baseball comedy The Bad News Bears is that it over-relies on Thornton's willingness to play an irredeemable degenerate. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's the screenwriting equivalent of those fat substitutes used by snack food manufacturers: the finished product looks all right but the taste is off, and the aftereffects are embarrassing and uncomfortable. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
In a blind taste test, I couldn't possibly have identified this as a Linklater movie, and he's a filmmaker I generally like. If anything, Bad News Bears shows that Linklater can get in and out of a movie like a cat burglar, without leaving his fingerprints anywhere. OK, he's proven it. He need never do that again. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Hardly the kids'-sports movie we need, but maybe it's as much as we can handle. Read full review
42
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
This is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness. Read full review
40
Film ThreatDon R. Lewis
Just isn't a very good movie. In fact it's kind of like living in the San Fernando Valley where it was filmed. It's big, kind of neat, has nice weather and has all the accouterments of a real city. But there's no "there" there. Read full review
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