To be honest, I wasn't very excited about watching "The Bad News Bears". The prospect of watching a film about a little league baseball team wasn't very appealing to me. But I found this film to be surprisingly funny and insightful. The plot of the film is your conventional "underdog" story in which an unskilled little league team, "the Bad News Bears" are coached by Morris Buttermaker, a washed-up minor league baseball player and alcholic who cleans swimming pools. This match is a recipe for disaster, as the Bears continue to lose game after game. Realizing that the team has nearly no chance of winning, he recruits his former step-daughter, Amanda, an extremely skilled pitcher (Yes! girls rock!) and Kelly Leaks, the local motorcyclist and rebel, an equally good player.
With these new additions to the team, the Bad News Bears start winning more and more games, until they are set to face the best team team in the league, the Yankees, coached by the competitive Roy Turner. By this point in the film, Morris has become hell-bent on winning and completely disregards the feelings of all of the team. He encourages Kelly to do most of the work on the field, which creates resentment towards him from the other teammates. When Amanda tries to develop a fatherly relationship with him outside of baseball, he completely writes her off, even throwing beer in her face. At the end of the movie, Coach Turner's son, Joey, purposefully sabotages the game after his father slaps him for disregarding his orders. This event makes Morris realize that he has become as competitve as Turner, and lost sight of all of the positive aspects of the game. Subsequently, Morris allows Amanda and other low-level players to participate in the game.
In the end, the Bad News Bears lost to the Yankees by a narrow margin (7-6). The Yankees gave their respect to the Bears by saying that although they were very skilled players, they had a lot of "guts". The film ends with a happy celebration. I really liked this movie because it was light-hearted and funny, but conveyed a powerful message. This movie really shows the importance of bravery and the willingness to take risks. One of my favorite sayings is, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." No matter where you start from, you have the ability to become better. Everything lies in the attitude that you bring to the table and your willingness to simply try. I am very happy that I watched this film.
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