I haven’t seen “Love Story”, but this is also a central plot point of the 1960’s novel “I Heard The Owl Call My Name” - and yes, in that case, the sick character who is not told he’s dying is a man. So I think it’s just an early-20th-century authoritarian thing.
People love to say that, but aside from one line (“All we got on this team are a buncha Jews, spics, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eatin’ moron!”) there’s nothing in The Bad News Bears that couldn’t be done today for a tween movie audience.
Matthau’s constant drinking might not make it out of the editing room these days.
So I take it you’ve never watched a single episode of Family Guy, huh? Or the Bad News Bears remake from 2005, for that matter (Billy Bob drank throughout the movie).
The film has some flaws, but not because it’s dated. As jsc1953 points out, the object of the theft–the drugs in the teddy bear–just aren’t worth the risks and/or the elaborate plan. Furthermore, the crooks a running a con on a blind woman alone in her apartment, so why does Alan Arkin need such hokey disguises? Even so, I would say the movie is suspensful even today–which I guess is the point of thrillers, no matter how old.
Screwball comedies just have not aged well at all–think of 30’s classics like It Happened One Night or The Front Page, which look stagey and ham-fisted today. But even taking this into account I agree Some like it Hot is pretty overrated.
Sure I have. But I wouldn’t call those tween movie audiences.
What would you call them? And if the movie was just remade a few years ago more or less identically (just without the “spics, niggers…” line), doesn’t that prove its not too outrageous for the 21st century?
Older than tween? I don’t really know or care, so, uh, you win?
Huh? Man, this place gets freakin’ weird sometimes. :rolleyes:
The remake was rated PG-13. That rating wasn’t around for the first one for what it’s worth.
Nothing gets old faster than our notions of what’s cool. And that makes a lot of the Rat Pack films (like ***Robin and the Seven Hoods ***or the original Ocean’s Eleven) painful to watch.
Frankie and Dino and Sammy and Friends think they’re a fun-loving, cool, happening, ring a ding ding bunch of hip cats, which only makes them seem pathetic!
Oh, just me being weird I reckon 
So? If a PG-13 rating existed in the 70s, Bad News Bears certainly would have qualified.
It’s not TBNB couldn’t be remade (it obviously was), but the tone of unrepentant assholery and sexism present in the first film would not be replicated today. And, IIRC, there was no underlying “message” to the first film, other than Matthau maybe drinking a little less? It’s been a while since I’ve seen it…
I note that both of them are on Netflix instant view. I’ll watch the first one tonight, the remake some time tomorrow, and see how they compare. I just think the remake will be more preachy, “messagey”, since society today is moreso than 1976.
Hence: “for what it’s worth.”
Just finished watching the original Bad News Bears, and I stand corrected - it’s not as objectionable as I thought. Oh, there are a few things that possibly wouldn’t pass muster today, especially the scene where the black kid strips to his underwear and sits in a tree, and Matthau throwing his beer at Tatum O’Neal, but all-in-all, I was surprised as to how tame it all was.
A couple of things I found interesting:
- The kid who played Kelly Leak (the juvenile delinquent) played Rorsarch in The Watchmen.
- Eddie, from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father was in this movie.
I was right that there was no message - Matthau was still a drunk at the end, the kids were still vulgar, etc. But it wasn’t as raunchy as I remember it (which isn’t surprising as I saw it when I was 9, and it was probably pretty raunchy to a 9yo me.)
The Godfather. Young people always ask me after they watched it, “so what was so great about Brando?” Those same morons think “Scarface” is the greatest movie of all time.
The good news is, those who used to think “Rambo” was an art film are now both old and dumb.
Interesting mentions of Anatomy of a Murder. The trial attorney who taught one of my law school classes praised it as a good representation of what actually happens in a courtroom. I watched it again recently and wondered why there’s never been a color remake. Then I realized that the word panties—or the scandal of a woman coming back without hers—isn’t quite the shocker today that it was at the time.
Some movies are hopelessly dated but function as nice little time capsules of the (Hollywood-filtered) social attitudes of the time. Sunday in New York comes to mind.
…“First Blood” Rambo or “Rambo IV” Rambo?
'Cause I can see the artistry in the latter. It’s just that it’s art that includes lovingly rendered CGI intestines. 
Seriously, though, I’m actually surprised there isn’t more sci-fi on the list—although, thinking about it, perhaps it’s that there’s generally only a narrow window to hit to make a sci-fi film hopelessly dated? “B” movies and the like (i.e. Attack of the Zuccinni People) have elements that are enjoyably timeless, if silly (i.e. spaceships and rayguns), while really top-notch movies are timeless because of quality themes, setting, story, or whathaveyou.
So to be hopelessly dated, perhaps the movie has to be just smart enough to take itself seriously, but just stupid enough to fail at it.
Although I’m at a loss to come up with any examples off the top of my head—except maybe elements of The Andromeda Strain. Which I actualy like, ponderous thing that it is. Though it’s mired in the politics of the era, keeps showing off Avant-garde editing flourishes that ranged from amusing to irritating, and scenes showcasing the high-tech computerized equipment in what I’m sure is supposed to be awe-inspiring and more than a little ominously dehumanizing, but really just seems so mundane (to the modern eye) that you probably wouldn’t even bother filming them, nowadays—no more than you’d film a character being shown how to use an ATM.
Right. A movie can be utterly and completely of it’s time, and still be worth watching because it’s a window into that time. So a 50s science fiction movie where the women are stewardesses on a spaceship, and the space pilot is smoking cigarettes, and the space doctor extols the health benefits of atomic radiation, well, that makes the movie dated but it doesn’t make the movie unwatchable.
The parts that make the movie unwatchable aren’t the dated parts, they’re the parts that made it a crappy movie even in the 50s–glacial pacing, nonsensical plot, unfunny jokes, and so on. Nobody thought *Attack of the Zucchini People * was a good movie, even in the 50s they thought it was crap.