... anyway, baseball flick number two is a remake of the 1976 comedy that had grumpy Walter Matthau coaching little league brats, led by Tatum O'Neal. Now Billy Bob Thornton is the chief grouch and he has a much more diverse crew, including a kid in a wheelchair, the occasion for horribly non-PC humour. "You kids swing like Helen Keller at a piñata party," he snarls.

Richard Linklater's film pulls its punches occasionally, but it still has plenty of zip. Greg Kinnear is an obnoxious yuppie coach, and Marcia Gay Harden is the uptight mom secretly turned on by Billy Bob's bad boy image. It's no Bad Santa, but it's fun.