The Film Junkie

This remake of the 1976 original starring Walter Matthau doesn’t work quite as well in a modern setting, but still gets a few laughs off.  Billy Bob Thornton is perfectly cast the pathetic exterminator with a drinking problem who played for 3/4 of an inning in the Major Leagues and is now being paid to coach a local baseball team.  Thornton is just as unpleasant as he can be and that is what is so appealing about him.  You understand why the kids would listen to him, because there is something insanely attractive about Thornton…I totally get where Angelina Jolie was coming from.

The kids are great, but nowhere near the awesomeness of the original cast.  Marcia Gay Harden is slumming it as an over-achieving mom and Greg Kinnear is playing the same character he played in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ (2006), but without lessons learned and all that.

The best thing about the film is that it was directed by Richard Linklater, who is starting a dual-platformed career now as kiddie-movie great (2003’s ‘The School of Rock’) as well as indie conversation movie legend (the ‘Before Sunrise/Sunset’ movies, 1993’s ‘Dazed and Confused’).  He has a way with child actors, making them seem more adult than most kids are allowed to be in modern film.  He remembers that kids are more like ‘The Goonies’ than ‘Charlotte’s Web’, that they are wayyy more ‘South Park’ than ‘Dora The Explorer’ in reality and he uses that to make actual characters out of them, instead of over-moralizing.  This is not ‘School of Rock’, but it ain’t bad either.

Grade: B