The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)

Admirable film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It boggles the mind to think that this steaming pile of crap was in some way related to the brilliant 1976 classic with Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal. Perhaps having to follow the original was too much for any movie, maybe. HOWEVER, let's not let the makers of this terrible film off the hook so easily. This movie is rancid in every sense of the word. Although it is made under the pretense of following the Bears (or at least the actors that continued to be in these films), the Bears become so secondary during the film, they are almost entirely forgotten. What we are left with is Tony Curtis trying to do a one- man show, and failing miserably. There were so many openings for potential comedic spots that were just completely missed by the makers of this film. For one, could you imagine what kind of hijinks the Bears could have gotten into on a plane flight from the US to Japan? Apparently none, because that was glossed over completely. Seriously, to itemize a list of problems with this turd would take twenty pages. Just know that most of the talent from the original skipped this thing and rightfully so. What you have is a confused cast trying to follow an incoherent and completely ridiculous script and story, that at best, is awful. I don't fault Curtis for this film, no actor or actors could have made this "story" work.

After watching Lost In Translation and seeing Bill Murray's character awkwardly appear on a quirky Japanese TV show called 'Matthew's Best Hit TV', I couldn't help but be reminded of the Bad News Bears Go To Japan and the Bears appearance on a 70's Japanese variety show.Both movies tried to show the quirky aspects of modern Japanese society, although the subplots in LIT were a bit more subtle than those of BNBGTJ. Think you can compare all movies made about Japanese society with LIT and come up with the same similarities? Two that come to mind, Mr. Baseball and Black Rain don't even come close. As strange as it may seem, LIT and BNBGTJ are more closely related than it would seem on the surface.

After repeated viewings i have some comments..Paramount, how could you release this movie upon the movie viewing public? The story is weak, Tony Curtis should have never been brought on board, nobody when i was a kid watching in the theatre could have cared less about his involvement or the endless scenery he chewed and what is worse is that the Bears are nowhere to be seen for over half the movie! And speaking of the Bears, a good chunk of the team is missing!! However, the most glaring omission of them all...where is Chris Barnes AKA Tanner Boyle? Outside of Jackie Earle Haley, you could have dumped anybody else from the team and nobody would have cared, but Tanner was the heart of the team in the original and the sequel. This movie singlehandly killed the Bears franchise.

This film didn't follow-up to the first two successful sequels! John Berry, was not a good director, and especially a bad script!!!Tony Curtis (Father of Jamie Lee, starred in "Halloween" the same year), did an Ok job, and I say that this film was disaster!!!NO STARS!!!