Review of Kicking & Screaming (2005) by Reed M — 12 Jan 2013

There isn't a lot I can talk about in this one. Mostly because it's so ordinary. The comedy is hit-and-miss, but never painfully bad. The acting okay, but Will Ferrell is playing the same character he always plays. The kids are better than you might expect since they're child actors, but nothing special. The script is bland and predictable. Everything is just cliched and uninspired.

The movie is about Phil Weston (Will Ferrell) who has decided to coach his son's little league soccer team. This turns out to be a quite a challenge since Phil is a terrible athlete and so are all the kids on the team. From there you can tell how the rest of the movie pans out.

The script is extremely predictable. I could literally tell what was going to happen in certain scenes by thinking of what happened before. The only times what I guessed would happen was wrong is when what did happen was pointless and didn't make sense. For example, during the finals of the little league championship we see the commentator (since when did little league soccer have commentators?) is dressed like the captain of a cruise ship. There is no reason for this, in fact, there is no reason for the commentator to be there at all. Why?

The comedy in this movie isn't always bad, but it isn't always good either. Like I said, hit-and-miss. There are some enjoyable, if not cliched, characters. Phil's dad, Buck is one of the funniest in the movie, and all the kids have a funny trait to them. Of course Phil's wife is the most boring character you have ever seen. She has no defining traits whatsoever, she's so bland that if you painted her personality, it would create a beige canvas.

This movie, like most sports movies, loves to use montages. You can't go 20 minutes without seeing a montage, it's crazy. There's even a montage that cuts in an emotional scene before the audience even has time to register the fact that they just watched a sad scene. It's silly.

I would only recommend this film if there's nothing else on TV to watch. It's not an awful film, but it's not a good one either. There's no harm in watching it, although you'll forget about it in a week or two.

It's a sports movie with nothing new to offer.