Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Kicking and Screaming (2005)


Directed by Jesse Dylan. I guess I enjoyed this but I'm uncomfortable with movies that want to be family films but just aren't. If you're not familiar with this movie, here's the deal; Will Ferrel is a nice guy reluctantly coaching his son's soccer team full of misfits while his mean, hyper-competitive father (Robert Duvall) terrorizes him by coaching another team in the same league.

The movie was marketed as being about the kids but its really about Ferrel's character working out his Daddy issues, which are far too mature for any kid to understand or find interesting. The game play sequences are funny enough, and Will Ferrel's screen presence is funny in a way that kids can pick up on, but that's not enough to make this a kidvid.

So in a way, that just makes this a decent comedy for grown ups, and a breath of fresh air now that it seems like all comedies for grown ups seem to try too hard, like they feel like they have to gross me out or shock me or just one-up the last one. The most unique thing about this is seeing Mike Ditka act. One disturbing thing here is that I really get the impression that Robert Duvall doesn't have to work very hard to play an asshole.

Also, this movie is not to be confused with the 1995 Noah Baumbach movie with the same title, though I seriously doubt there's much danger of that.

No comments:

Post a Comment