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Film review

'Kicking & Screaming' scores big laughs

Will Ferrell and the rest of the team have a winner in this funny, family-friendly flick.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published May 12, 2005

The best thing about the youth soccer comedy Kicking & Screaming is that it allows children to act like children, especially the tall one in the middle of everything.

Don't let Will Ferrell's age fool you; he's the biggest kid on screen.

His pleasant brand of goofiness, matched against a pair of bullying old pros, lifts Kicking & Screaming a notch above most movies about underdog jocks, leading to a big game as predictable as sunrise. The lunatic tinge to his line readings, each expression of befuddled bluffing, is perfect for these otherwise familiar circumstances.

Ferrell plays Phil Weston, a vitamin salesman who's nothing like his father Buck (Robert Duvall), a gung-ho sporting goods magnate who always made his son feel inferior, from benching Phil during youth sports to marrying a younger, hotter woman (Musetta Vander) than Phil's devoted wife, Barbara (Kate Walsh).

Buck even dumps his grandson (Dylan McLaughlin) from a championship soccer team to a cellar-dwelling bunch of misfits, just because he reminds the old man of Phil. It's a father-son dynamic played like a comical version of Duvall's triumph in The Great Santini, with tetherball subbing for driveway basketball as a means for dad to assert authority. An odder coupling of actors would be tough to find, and harder to top.

Obviously, Phil accepts the job dumped on him to coach his son's new team, leading to a championship game showdown for all the marbles he lost over the years to his father's dominance. But director Jesse Dylan, son of music legend Bob Dylan, has a wild card up his sleeve.

Buck's macho veneer is tested by the only person imaginable to do it: former Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka, playing himself as Buck's neighbor who accepts Phil's offer to be assistant coach. The idea of Ditka playing second fiddle to anyone in anything is amusing. Watching him deal with children, and Phil's weak-kneed demeanor, is occasionally hilarious. Buck and Ditka are two slabs of granite mashing Phil in the middle, and few actors get squeezed as comically as Ferrell.

Kicking & Screaming could still be a failure, if the children involved weren't so casually adorable. Nobody acts beyond their age, and a few, especially tiny Elliott Cho as Byong Sun, adopted son of same-sex parents, are larcenous actors. They always remain refreshingly unaware of the grownups' problems, not plotting to teach the adults lessons, but saying the right childish things at the right time to make a difference.

Dylan also deserves credit for staging solid soccer sequences, deftly edited with judicious use of slow motion, better to appreciate Francesco Liotti and Alessandro Ruggiero's nifty footwork as a pair of Italian recruits.

Some jokes wear thin, such as Phil's growing addiction to coffee that unleashes his manic side. Others, like Ditka's persistent arrogance and Byong Sun's terminal shyness, are practically foolproof.

So, beyond its predictable plot, what's not to like about Dylan's movie? It's as family-friendly as studio offerings get these days, with a playground theme to which anyone can relate. And it has Ferrell, who's quickly replacing Steve Martin as our funniest father figure. This could be the sleeper hit of early summer, through sheer Will.

Grade: B-

Director: Jesse Dylan

Cast: Will Ferrell, Robert Duvall, Mike Ditka, Kate Walsh, Musetta Vander, Dylan McLaughlin, Elliot Cho, Francesco Liotti, Alessandro Ruggiero

Screenplay: Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick

Rating: PG; crude humor, mild profanity

Running time: 95 min.

[Last modified May 11, 2005, 09:32:06]