7300th Review! The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)

“Marvin, if I take off my shoes, I’m going to get athlete’s foot!” – Abe Bernstein

“Well, that’ll be the only part of you that is an athlete.” – Marvin Lazar

Number of Times Seen – at least twice (Cable in the 80’s and 14 Jan 2021)

Brief Synopsis – The Bears are sent to Japan to play in an exhibition game against the national team.

My Take on it – This is a horrendous sequel that doesn’t do justice to this series at all which is quite a shame.

The film adds Tony Curtis as a promoter who tries to theoretically help the team but instead the story focuses too much on his story and activities instead of on the team itself.

The films baseball scenes are very limited here and they don’t manage to find a way to keep things more fun which is a shame.

It was nice seeing some of the players return from the previous films but none of the really have a way to contribute to the story here.

They definitely should have stopped this series before making this movie which completely derails anything they might have established beforehand.

The story fails to find ways to focus on the kids and instead deal too much with the way that Curtis’ character tries to make money on the whole scheme which is quite a shame because it takes so much away from the fun that this film should have been.

The one good thing about this film is being able to hear Take Me Out to the Ballgame in Japanese.

Bottom Line – Horrendous sequel that doesn’t do justice to the series at all. The addition of Curtis as the promoter doesn’t allow for the kids to shine because the story feels far too focused on his activities instead of theirs. The baseball scenes are quite limited and the story doesn’t manage to stay fun at all in the way it all is presented. Nice seeing some of the players return from the previous films, but they should have stopped before making this one which really drags down the whole premise much too far.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The Paramount mountain changes into Mount Fuji before the opening credits begin. (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (3/10)