Bad News Bears

**  (111m | PG-13)

When the executives at Paramount Pictures saw Billy Bob Thornton play a bitter, abusive, drunkard shopping-mall Kris Kringle in 2003′s raunchy, bitingly funny “Bad Santa,” they must have said to themselves, “If we water this down to a PG-13, we’ll make a mint!” Thus was born this lackluster remake of a once-edgy yet family-friendly Little League comedy full of cursing pre-pubescent underdogs that has lost both its bite and its heart. Thornton is uncharacteristically flat filling in for Walter Matthau as the kids’ boozehound coach, and the usually creative Richard Linklater (“Before Sunset,”"Waking Life”) provides uncharacteristically lazy direction. About half the kids are terrible actors, leaving many jokes falling to the dugout floor with a wet thud, and the central plot about the players’ come-from-behind transformation into a cohesive team has similar problems: Linklater shows their early failings (accompanied by Bizet’s “Carmen,” as in the original) and later shows them winning, but offers up very little struggle in between. “Bad News Bears” does hit several home runs with bad-taste one-liners, but there’s nothing about this remake that feels fresh or refurbished.