Kicking and Screaming

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Will Ferrell has entered a new realm of comedy: good, clean fun. In Kicking and Screaming, Ferrell, as Phil The Reluctant Soccer Dad, makes a bold move by agreeing to coach a “loser� team (the Tigers) whose greatest opponent is none other than Phil’s no-holds-barred the-only-fun-is-winning dad’s team (the Gladiators).

The tension between these two can be observed in myriad other families. Parent is an ape-gone-wild rabid (fill in the skill/talent/hobby) fan and child is either ungifted, uninterested, or both. Likewise, Phil’s father, Bucky (Duvall), is the retired athlete’s athlete—old and crusty and rude, but he can still beat his uncoordinated wimp of a son in tetherball (like that’s a major feat). So we get the distinct impression that Phil has been under his father’s competitive (yet still opposable) thumb his entire life, and would just ONCE like to be on the winning side.

Enter the Tigers—the least disciplined, least skilled, least motivated soccer players ever to imitate pregnant women by stuffing soccer balls up their jerseys. And Phil, under duress, agrees to coach them. They make it to the playoffs (with some Italian help), and through a rather unconventional “do everything just the opposite of how your coach taught you� strategy, the Tigers beat the Gladiators for the championship of the free world (or at least their little part of it).

While somewhat predictable and Bad News Bears-ish, the film does make for an entertaining evening. Will Ferrell’s cleaned-up humor is especially effective in this setting, since his facial expressions and physical humor play very well on the soccer field and off. We may be able to determine the end result of the soccer season from the time the title rolls up the screen, but there are a few novel twists and turns to keep the audience interested.

Definitely worth noting are the characterizations themselves. Bucky, Phil’s dad, is a man you love to hate. He’s crass, pushy, condescending, and generally a boor. (We can easily see how Phil came to dislike his father.) Yet, at the end of the movie, he loses gracefully—not at all what we’d expect from his performance throughout the movie. Phil himself undergoes some serious changes as well—starting out naïve and uncertain, going win-at-all-costs berserk just like his father, and finally returning to sanity and enjoying the game, just in time to win fair and square, and enjoy the championship.

The relationships of the adults to the children are another bonus—while the adults aren’t perfect (obviously), several times we see them admit their wrong-doings to the children, and asking forgiveness. The humbled adults do act gracefully, and apologize when it is appropriate. (I think most every adult could use a lesson or two from Kicking and Screaming…) Watching Ferrell go from passive to rabid to re-enlightened brings the movie a careful sense of how easily we can turn into exactly what we hate—yet it also demonstrates quite clearly that a mistake is a mistake, and can be corrected and avoided in the future.

There may be nothing earth-shattering about this movie (I doubt that was the intent, anyway), but it most certainly offers some good examples of everyday people dealing with everyday things, and doing so, for the most part, graciously. The champions win gracefully, the second place winners “lose� gracefully, and the screwed-up adults come down off their pedestals, at least occasionally, to re-familiarize themselves with the world of non-soccer (yes, it does exist).

In short, Kicking and Screaming offers a fun-loving, clean film for kids and adults alike. Throughout the movie people change, and while there aren’t many warm-and-fuzzy moments, the point is made that no one is a lost cause—not a team of untalented kids, not a reluctant (and ineffective) coach, not a domineering brute of a father. Add to that a few good belly laughs, and you’ve got yourself a movie you don’t need to be dragged kicking and screaming to go see.

—Overview
—About
—Photos
—Spiritual Connections