Watch: Why ‘The Bad News Bears’ is a Covertly Subversive Masterpiece

Michael Ritchie’s 1976 comedy about a squad of underachieving Little Leaguers and their boozing coach (played by a rumpled Walter Matthau) is a bracing antidote to most of today’s carefully vetted family-friendly feel good films. Ritchie’s uniquely warmhearted but unsentimental take on his crew of misfits allows even the most peripheral of characters their own memorable moments. Rowdy, profane and, happily, avoiding the cheap theatrics of the triumphant finale usually found in sports films, "The Bad News Bears" is yet another wonderfully unruly example of the lost, lamented ’70s cinema.