Kicking And Screaming

Buck Weston (Duvall) is the ultra-competitive coach of U-10 soccer team The Gladiators. When Buck trades his grandson Sam (McLaughlin) to The Tigers, his mild-mannered son Phil (Ferrell) takes over coaching The Tigers in order to prove a point to his old man. The point, presumably, being that there is no end to the derivative old tat Will Ferrell is prepared to put his name to. Combining every lame (and should-have-been-amputated) cliche in the sports movie manual with a cast so god-awful they should have been sedated and/or exorcised and sent home, Kicking and Screaming depends heavily on Ferrell's comic talent for blank-faced mugging when confronted with an impossible situation. That he should have tried that expression out on his agent when this script was first mooted goes without saying, but what truly hurts is that you know, right from the beginning, that Ferrell will turn his group of multi-cultural shambolic misfits and midgets into a winning team before announcing A REALLY IMPORTANT MORAL near the end. (Actually, this movie offers an intriguing take on how to turn losers into winners - dump 'em, get a pair of wonder-kid Italian immigrants in to score all the goals, and sign up former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to play himself. Oh, and drink loads of coffee). It's all so bad that it's tempting to believe Kicking and Screaming is intended as a parody of bad sports movies, until you remember the script was written by the geniuses responsible for Space Jam and The Santa Clause: if you know anything at all about the game of football, you may actually cry.