La chouette équipe au Japon

Sleazy hustler/promoter Tony Curtis (looking old and tired here) talks our pint-sized heroes into going to Japan to play an international little league game with the best team in the Orient. Sleep-inducing third installment lacks the wit and charm of the original and even lacks the minimum credibility that the first sequel had. Jackie Earle Haley and the rest of the ballplayers seem like little more than spoiled adolescent performers that are just going through the motions. Curtis' one-liners and used car dealer-styled part wears thin before we are even settled in. More proof that sequels rarely work, particularly in the 1970s. Turkey (0 stars out of 5).

Tony Curtis in his memoirs said he was not pleased with the results of The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. Probably he thought when signing on for this film in the first place he was going to be part of a hit series like James Bond. Unfortunately this film came up way short and The Bad New Bears ground to a halt.

Try as I might I could not wrap my mind around the concept that the parents of this club would send their kids unchaperoned to Japan with an unregenerate conman like Tony Curtis. Not like Curtis hasn't played hustlers on the big screen, he has and quite successfully. But that character he has done is jarringly out of place in a family type film.

Curtis is a down and out promoter who has the idea to promote the Bad News Bears to play the champion team of Japan. That's roughly like getting the Harlem Globetrotters to play the NBA champions, the Bears play in a style like the Globetrotters.

When it proves successful all kinds of people want to cash in and Curtis has to reexamine his own life.

Couldn't buy it and I doubt audiences in 1978 were buying it.

This--dare I call it--film is, IMHO, one of the worst productions ever recorded onto celluloid and released by a studio. Our daughter loved the original BNB, and seeing original director Michael Ritchie as this installment's Producer gave us some reason to hope, but 3 minutes of this extreme dog-of-a-movie was enough to dispel all of THAT! It's hard to believe this was made only two years after the original came out. From Tony Curtis' boozy, utterly amoral character (was this an acting job?), to the very incoherent script and equally helpless direction, this is a testament, I can only imagine, to the power of greed. Greed by a studio and production company that had had a hit with the first BNB movie and was determined to milk it for all it was worth--regardless of the #&%@! they had to serve up! Thanks folks! Save yourself the considerable bother and DO NOT watch this movie!

In his autobiography, Tony Curtis blasted this movie, the final entry of the "Bad News Bears" series. Watching this movie, it doesn't take long to figure out why Curtis hated this movie. The strange thing, however, is that despite his less than adequate surroundings, Curtis gives a pretty good performance. He's lively, and manages to deliver a few quips in his trademark sarcastic manner that manage to provoke a few chuckles. Aside from Curtis, however, this movie is a terrible mess. I know these movies aren't supposed to be politically correct, but there are some touches that today could be considered racist. But the storytelling is even worse. For some reason, the kids in this movie don't get a lot of focus, and there's even less footage of them playing baseball. And most of the movie is one scene after another that doesn't advance the thin plot the slightest. It's hard to believe that Bill Lancaster, who wrote the sharp first movie, wrote this sloppy script.

The franchise is getting very old and tiring here and the once funny antics of those rambunctious little leaguers on the Bears baseball team aren't even the least bit funny anymore. Many of the kids from the first two films chose not to appear in this one (that may be one of the problems) and Tony Curtis seems lost in his role as the team's new coach, a shifty con man who attempts to make some big money by sending the Bears off to Japan for a highly publicized exhibition game against Japan's best little league baseball team. Paramount wisely chose to end the series after this one.