"Baseball is like dating a German chick. You can be in love with her... but she may not love you back."

This is the considered opinion of ratcatcher and newly elected coach of junior baseball team The Bears, Morris Buttermaker (Thornton).

He's a man who isn't averse to spicing up his beer with bourbon...a natural reaction to being bribed into the job by strait-laced lawyer Marcia Gay Harden.

Boasting World Series levels of disinterest, he has no desire to knock the gang of 12 misfits - "the bronze medallists in the Special Olympics" into shape.

For a start, one of his brats is in a wheelchair; two others only speak Spanish while nerdy Indian kid Prem Lahiri obsessively keeps the match stats on his laptop computer.

To begin with Butterworth, abuses his position to get the kids under his charge crawling under houses to help out with his pest infestation business.

However, spiked by overbearing rival coach Greg Kinnear, he finds some of his old competitive spirit returning and decides to give the bears bite.

Landing sponsorship from the Bo Peep strip club, Butterworth slowly coaxes the ever-improving Bears up the league and a final confrontation with hated rivals The Yankees.

Director Richard Linklater has wisely stayed with the structure of the 1976 classic (with Walter Matthau in the Butterworth role) but populated it with dialogue from Bad Santa's Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.

While not quite as black as that movie, this will appeal to youngsters who are already showing signs of a bleakly warped sense of humour.

Bob Thornton is terrific as Butterworth, whether leading the kids in a rousing chorus of John Cale's Cocaine or attempting a bridge-building exercise with his estranged stepdaughter.

And the script is terrific stuff. "You lie your ass off," he instructs one of his impressionable charges. "This is America."

Tim Evans