Walter Matthau, one of Hollywood's greatest curmudgeons, is in fine form as the star of "The Bad News Bears," playing the grousing, beer-swilling coach of a misfit little-league team that has sewn up last place since their formation. A former ballplayer reduced to cleaning swimming pools, needless to say he has invested little of himself to make the scrappy team any better...until he recruits a foul-mouthed star pitcher in the form of a young girl (Tatum O'Neal).<br /><br />With that perfectly craggy, blood-hound mug of his, the droopy shoulders and sluggish couch potato' demeanor, Matthau is just great  flipping out sardonic remarks as casually as he flips open a beer tab, and looking like he hardly has the energy even for that. Mixing it up with the tykes here, he evolves into a perfectly reincarnated W.C. Fields.<br /><br />Tatum O'Neal showed that her performance in "Paper Moon" wasn't just a fluke. Displaying the same wise-ass mien that won her an Oscar three years earlier (with more generous outpourings of profanity), she more than holds her own against the veteran Matthau, even teaching his character a lesson or two about team spirit and sportsmanship, while evoking sympathy on her own as she is forced to confront more personal, off-the-field problems.<br /><br />The runt-sized, ethnically disparate team is a fun, motley little crew that could have come right out of a McDonald's commercial. Chief rebel but much more coordinated is one small, hell-raising fireball, Jackie Earl Haley, who shows more grit than his sneakers after the bottom of the ninth. Though his open defiance and teen-cool stance masquerades a need to be liked and wanted, he still provides a mean spark before coming into his own.<br /><br />Vic Morrow shows off his formidable macho as the typically underhanded opposing coach, while Brandon ("The Courtship of Eddie's Father") Cruz, who plays Morrow's star pitcher son, has a nifty, poignant scene as a kid who finally stands up to his father's belittling bully act.<br /><br />Set smack dab in small-town, flag-waving America, director Michael Ritchie, who scored critical points the year before in the little-seen but dead-on satire "Smile," hits a box-office home run this time, always keeping things popping and managing to toss in a few interesting curve balls in the plot to keep it from falling into a typical "root for the underdog" comedy. More importantly, Ritchie never sacrifices the humanity of the characters for sure-fire comedy<br /><br />This highly, immensely popular film spawned a couple of sequels and a brief TV series. But beware, they are foul balls compared to this winner.