I was about two scenes into “Bad News Bears” when I got the feeling I had seen it all before – not because of its surprising loyalty to the 1976 original – but because this theme has been played out too many times.

Watching Billy Bob Thornton portray a washed up, drunk, womanizing ex-pro baseball player named Morris Buttermaker change a team of Little League misfits into champions was eerily like watching “Kicking and Screaming,” with a little bit of “Bad Santa” thrown in.

So it’s no surprise Bill Lancaster’s original screenplay was adapted by the team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa – which wrote “Bad Santa,” – and that Thornton’s humorous but characteristic performance was nothing short of familiar. And though the Hollywood climate may have been different when the original “Bears” debuted, this story about a team of losers that rises against all odds to achieve success has been overdone to the point of becoming cliché. This film needs something more to carry it, and its reliance on fat jokes, racist innuendo and foul-mouthed children is not enough.

What this movie does have on its side is a decent legacy – and director Richard Linklater was smart enough to stick to it. In a season chock full of disappointing and flashy big-budget remakes, “Bad News Bears” at least retains much of the innocence and heart the original carried out so well. The story’s emphasis is really on the relationships between the Bears’ players and Buttermaker, and the players’ relationships with one another. The movie does provide a little wisdom toward the end, when Buttermaker turns toward his team and tells them, “One thing about quitting is when you start, it’s hard to stop.”

Thornton’s cynical edge is a refreshing counterpoint to the cutesy slant this movie tends to take, and his version of Buttermaker comes off as perhaps a little more suave and less downtrodden by life than Walter Matthau’s original portrayal.

Greg Kinnear’s uncharacteristic role as Roy Bullock, the egotistical coach of the competing team, is a grand success, as is Marcia Gay Harden’s convincing performance as the fluttery, self-absorbed attorney and mother of one of the Bears.

Though this story employs elements that many people love to see from Hollywood – crude humor, baseball, a team of losers becoming winners – it’s been done too many time. Perhaps the best thing about this movie is that it didn’t try too hard to ignore that.