I'm Not Scared

I thought the very idea of it would piss me off, but it doesn't. At least not as much as the whole Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thing. I'm speaking, of course, about the remake of The Bad News Bears. My general disdain for the "Chocolate Factory" remake is largely based on my general disdain for Tim Burton. I think he makes great looking movies (although his set design is becoming a bit repetitive. Must everything have a curlicue at the end?) but he's a crappy storyteller. He knows nothing about pacing and too often gets swept up in his own vision, seeming to forget that he's got a plot to finish.

Unlike Tim Burton, I trust Richard Linklater. I haven't seen a Linklater film I didn't like, at least a little, and he pulled off the seemingly impossible in 2003 with "School of Rock," a movie filled with kids that wasn't too cutesy or sappy. And since the "Bears" remake is also coming from the guys who wrote "Bad Santa," which was hilarious AND sick, I can't help but get my hopes up. I know that having the kids say some of the things they said in the original isn't going to make the cut in these times (and I'm annoyed by that, don't get me wrong), but I still think the movie is going to be funny.

Because watching a kid get hit in the head with a baseball is ALWAYS funny.