“It’s What You’ll Be Doing To Get Out of the Theater”

Call it the Bad News Bears of soccer, Kicking and Screaming is unsatisfactory as a sports movie and unsavory as a family movie. Just a few months ago, I saw a Woody Allen film entitled, Melinda and Melinda, which starred, among others, Will Ferrell. Ferrell was mesmerizing as a man estranged from his wife and falling in love with another woman. He showed promise as a dramatic actor and demonstrated a range previously unseen, and frankly, unimagined. Unfortunately, with Kicking and Screaming, Ferrell is back to his normal, comedic shtick and only displays an occasional flicker of his former brilliance.

Phil Weston (Ferrell) has spent his entire life in the shadow of his choleric, tough guy father, Buck (Robert Duvall), and has never lived up to Buck’s standard as a husband, father, businessman or human being. Phil was all elbows and knees when playing sports as a kid and held a permanent spot on his father’s bench. Now, when Phil learns that Buck traded his son, Sam, to a lower ranked team to give the boy more playing time, he spitefully accepts the vacant coaching position on Sam’s new team. Phil is out of his league as a coach, especially when taking on Buck, so he enlists the help of his father’s chief rival and next-door neighbor to be his assistant coach—Mike Ditka.

Ditka introduces Phil to coffee (the fuel of champions) and Phil is soon addicted, downing cup after cup at coffee shops and setting up an espresso machine on the bench during games. The team starts winning, thanks to Ditka’s expert guidance and the assistance of two Italian soccer prodigies—the boys can only play when all of their father’s meat orders are delivered (meat comes first). Phil’s newfound lust for winning, coupled with his strict coffee diet, sends him over the edge; he benches his son and the rest of the players are uneasy around the person he’s become. After his wife brings him back to reality, Phil destroys the coffee machine, apologizes to the team and reverts to his former, friendlier self. Throwing out the playbook and admonishing his kids to just have fun, Phil beats his father in the championship game and breaks the curse of his childhood.

If there’s a moral here, it’s murky, and Phil’s coaching tactics while under the influence of coffee (i.e. breaking opponent’s ribs) are reprehensible—the scene isn’t even remotely funny and certainly doesn’t belong in a family film. The movie tries to be a comedy, but isn’t—the coffee subplot is utterly ridiculous and Phil’s awkwardness around the lesbian couple might have been amusing ten years ago, but bombs here. The movie tries to be this year’s feel-good sports movie, but fails miserably. Kicking and Screaming tries to be entertaining, but sails far wide of its goal.

Rating: 2

Tags: Comedy, Sport