The Bad News Bears Go to Japan

Although director John Berry equips him with a bottle at every opportunity in an effort to recreate the bumbling but lovable charm of Matthau's performance, Curtis is never a sympathetic character. Curtis is by nature far too slick and suave a character ever to be a lovable curmudgeon. [04 July 1978]

Producer Michael Ritchie (who directed the first installment) and writer-creator Bill Lancaster encore with Japan resulting in a more vigorous film than the sodden Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.

By and large the film seems humorless, the reflection of exhausted or snide entertainers. [21 June 1978, p.B13]

There is almost a total absence of action in the picture - not even any baseball, until a few minutes at the end - and a certain faithfulness to showing the worst of Western-originated Japanese culture has resulted in long scenes of variety and game shows played entirely in Japanese. [23 June 1978, p.19]

It's somewhat more energetic than the previous year's Breaking Training, and the Japanese locations are a plus, but so much silliness has been substituted for the solid situations and characterizations of the original that it's hard to believe the same people had anything to do with both pictures.

Third and last in the Bad News series, with Curtis as a Hollywood hustler trying to make a buck exploiting the sad sack little league baseballers, but suffering the obligatory change of heart. Dire.

The Bad News Bears Go to Japan isn't the sort of bad movie that angers you. It's sad in the way of something that's been abandoned. It deserved better from the people involved.