There’s a remake of the 1976 movie “Bad News Bears” opening tomorrow. This may be the most wholly unnecessary remake in the history of the planet. I recently saw the original, and what’s so startling — and wonderful — about it is that it could practically be released today with not a word changed and not be in the least dated. Only the cars would suggest the original 70s setting, and even those might be explicable given the California setting. Only the fact that there’s a mild point made of the team’s female pitcher — who immediately earns respect by throwing at somebody’s head — suggests we are not yet in full Title IX territory. Every theme in the movie, down to the excessively involved parents, the excessive importance attached to little league sports and the desultory pre-teen attitudes of the excessively sophisticated youngsters who don’t even know what they’re cursing about, remains a vivid and potent issue today. And though Billy Bob Thornton is a very good actor, there is no way on earth he can match the shambling Walter Matthau as a middle-aged drunken former pitcher who finds purpose in his coaching until he just takes it too far.

“The Bad News Bears” has a superb script by Bill Lancaster, son of Burt, who is one of the tragic Hollywood stories, a major talent in his own right who did nothing else of note because of booze and Oedipal issues — a story told glancingly by the memoirist Alison Rose in her otherwise pointless account of her life as a pretty girl in Hollywood and New York, Better than Sane.

Anyway, please see the original, which will remind you of the days when it was possible for a modest, thoughtful, clever, fresh, funny and character-driven movie to come out of Hollywood.