First, the good news: With Billy Bob Thornton and his "Bad Santa" writers on board and on-a-roll Richard Linklater (the critically acclaimed "Before Sunset" and the audience-acclaimed "School of Rock") calling the shots, there was sufficient cause for hope that the picture would emerge as something else than yet another pointless remake.

Fortunately, Thornton, playing an only slightly less caustic version of his ill-mannered department store Kris Kringle, remains in fine inappropriate form and Glenn Ficarra & John Requa's respectfully faithful script and Linklater's typically unforced directing style combine to generate many moments of laugh-out-loud comedy.

But somehow those moments never add up to a fully satisfying viewing experience. There's a momentum-killing, start/stop quality to the sequences that prevents this underdog story from rounding the bases and sprinting for home with the spirited energy of a Jack Black in "School of Rock."

Without that crowd-pleasing boost and with an assault of potty language that gives that PG-13 rating a run for its money (at the risk of shutting out the younger kids), the Paramount Pictures release likely will land more closely in the "Kicking & Screaming" ballpark rather than going "The Longest Yard" distance.

For those with a scorecard, the first "Bad News Bears" inspired a pair of inferior follow-ups -- 1977's "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training" and 1978's "The Bad News Bears Go to Japan" -- neither of which featured Matthau or were directed by Ritchie.

The new version is definitely better than the two sequels, with Thornton bringing his own curmudgeonly irreverent spin to the role of Coach Buttermaker, here a former pro baseball player-turned-exterminator who spent all of a couple of innings in a big league game.

Coaxed into taking on the hopelessly inept team of misfits by a high-maintenance attorney with her own agenda (Marcia Gay Harden), Buttermaker makes a half-hearted go of it, occasionally locking horns with Ray Bullock (Greg Kinnear), the self-satisfied coach of the Bears' longtime rivals, the Yankees.

Aside from injecting some of that meaner-spirited, but admittedly funny "Bad Santa Jr." dialogue, writers Ficarra and Requa stick very close to the original Bill Lancaster script, while adding a few characters who better reflect the contemporary cultural landscape.

Joining the brat and the nerd and the angry fat guy, there's now an Armenian, a kid in an electric wheelchair and a Mark McGwire-smitten black kid, and, true to its comic roots, the movie proves to be an equal-opportunity offender.

But Buttermaker's lackadaisical approach to life seems to have rubbed off on Linklater's direction, which really could have a shot of adrenaline to move things along, particularly in the late innings.

Given that a number of the young newcomers were cast first for their athletic ability over previous acting experience, the juvenile performances are pretty uneven, especially when held up to the original's lineup led by Tatum O'Neal and Jackie Earle Haley.

Behind the scenes, taking a cue from the '76 version, composer Edward Shearmur uses Bizet's "Carmen" to underscore the game sequences, but somehow what came across as inspired three decades ago just feels odd and rather out of place today.

Any movie season that can pitch three strikes of rehashed junk like "Rebound," "Kicking and Screaming" and now a remake of the beloved 1976 comedy "The Bad News Bears" certainly deserves to be called out.

Even the original "The Bad News Bears" was a bit overpraised but it certainly was an extra-base hit with a certain generation. Its pairing of irascible Walter Matthau as alcoholic, washed-up little league coach Morris Buttermaker and smart-aleck Tatum O'Neal as star pitcher Amanda Whurlitzer gave it a soft spark and edge.

In Richard Linklater's updated version, Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton plays Buttermaker, a has-been pitcher who threw two-thirds of an inning for the Seattle Mariners, and he's a self-loathing, womanizing bigot whose thoughtless remarks are equal opportunity offenses. No faction of humanity is safe from his unedited comments, not African Americans, the handicapped, gay people or Armenians, for goodness sake. Even Helen Keller is slandered -- twice. The only women who seem to slide under the wire are those who work at Hooters.

In 1976, there was something slightly adventurous in a plot line that used a girl as hero to help a group of bedraggled, gawky boys change from a troupe of losers to a united team. But girls in little league don't surprise anymore and consequently the script isn't fresh or very fragrant.

Director Richard Linklater employed the writers of Thornton's irreverent comedy "Bad Santa" (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) to update Bill Lancaster's original script to appeal to today's kids and their supposedly more sophisticated sensibilities. But this is simply another in a long line of utterly unnecessary remakes that, having nothing new to say, clutch at crassness and dumbness.

And while O'Neal and Matthau crackled with chemistry in their verbal sparring, Thornton and Sammi Kane Kraft, who plays Amanda as a supposedly streetwise but actually whiny and colorless teenager, can't overcome a revamped relationship that tries to add some modern family dysfunction that instead points out the new script's many flaws.