'Kicking & Screaming' doesn't 'Bend it Like Beckham'

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

KICKING AND SCREAMING (PG) Two-and-a-Half Stars (Fair-to-Good) A modest but amusing family film about a father (Will Ferrell) who volunteers to coach his son's losing soccer team, mostly as a way to get back at his obnoxiously competitive father (Robert Duvall) who coaches the league's best team. Jesse Dylan directs. Universal, 87 minutes.

Thus, Weston becomes a stock comedy character — the adult who has a lot to learn from the far more mature children under his care.

Phil's impulsive volunteering is prompted by his feelings of inadequacy in the presence of his own father, a highly competitive veteran coach whose youth team is the best in the league. The older Weston is played by Robert Duvall, in a rare and amusing performance that channels his earlier "Great Santini" obsessed father role and takes it over the top.

So Phil takes over the last-place Tigers whose players include his boy, Sam, (Dylan McLaughlin), while his obnoxious dad leads the first-place Gladiators. Bet everything you own that the two teams will end up in the season finals, even if the Tigers are small, inept, mismatched youngsters, while the Gladiators look like an Olympic team.

Phil brings in a few ringers. First, he gets a neighbor to help coach. Since he's Mike Ditka (yes, that Mike Ditka), he knows a thing or two about coaching. Then, through Ditka, Phil discovers two soccer-playing youngsters recently arrived in town from their native Italy who can bend it like Beckham, so he recruits them for his team.

But, on the negative side, Phil becomes as obsessed and competitive as his warped father. And, in bizarre non sequitur, Phil also becomes obsessed with drinking coffee, which hypes him into overdrive, making him even more obnoxious.

Thank goodness, his boy has enough common sense to nip the Weston competitive tradition at the third-generation level. His dad and granddad have a lot to learn from the sensitive youngster.

Under Jesse Dylan's straightforward direction, "Kicking & Screaming" is hardly original, but it delivers what's to be expected: some typical Ferrell humor, a bit of family-oriented common sense and an object lesson in how not to coach a kids' team. And, of course, there's the big game looming ahead to keep up your interest.

It's not the best family film about soccer — that title goes to 2002's "Bend It Like Beckham." However, Beckham's PG-13 rating leaves out the little kids, so "Kicking and Screaming" fills the bill.

Rated PG, with mild profanity, crude humor.