Please, a moratorium on Ferrell films

Kicking & Screaming (2005)
Universal Pictures presents a Jesse Dylan film, starring Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall. Written by Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick. 95m. PG for thematic elements, language and some crude humor.

1 star

We’re approximately 38 percent through this year, but unfortunately only 25 percent through a spate of eight potential Will Ferrell films.

After spending seven seasons in the comedy purgatory, “Saturday Night Live,” Ferrell’s penchant for physical bits and making random exhortations laughable has resonated with audiences everywhere. He has also joined an quintet of actor/friends - including Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn – who regularly appear in each other’s movies, ensuring will see his lanky, 6-foot-3-inch frame for decades to come.

Ferrell’s continued popularity means trite, hackneyed works like “Kicking & Screaming” will exist in perpetuity as well. I couldn’t otherwise explain how a movie with former football coach Mike Ditka as its main supporting lead could ever get greenlighted.

For the record, I am a Ferrell fan. But like that significant other that you’ve just spent too much time with recently, Will, I think it’s time we spent some time apart.

In this family-friendly effort, Ferrell plays milquetoast vitamin guru Phil Weston who decides to coach his unathletic son’s soccer team. The Tigers are stacked with a veritable collection of “Bad News Bears” rejects, from the diminutive Byong Sun (Elliott Cho) to the prankster/faux-gangsta Mark (Steven Anthony Lawrence).

Phil’s son, Sam (Dylan McLaughlin), has just been traded to the team by his former coach/grandfather Buck (Robert Duvall), whose “win at all costs” attitude has poisoned the world of soccer tikes. Phil is no stranger to his father’s competitive nature, having been subjected to it all his life.

In order to turn the meek Tigers into soccer-savvy hooligans, Phil enlists the help of his father’s arch-enemy and next door neighbor, Mike Ditka. Ditka is, well, the same gum-chewing, barking, hotheaded coach he is in real life. It seems the former Bears coach is the primary catalyst for an extended B-plot involving Phil’s growing addiction to coffee, which often supplants the main story and provides the film’s few true laughs.

Like any Ferrell films, there’s plenty of sight gags and physical humor to keep the youngest theatergoers laughing. But it’s not sustained during the movie’s attempt to build its already predictable storyline. I saw little ones pacing up and down the theater’s aisles when there wasn’t a tetherball game in progress or an airbag to explode.

Perhaps the film’s biggest sin is that it doesn’t allow Ferrell to do what he does best: use outlandish facial expressions to sell bits. There’s a brief glimpse once, when he tells parents that his team present – a set of salmonella-diseased finches – “may have accidentally poisoned your children.”

While most movies would have allowed Ferrell’s character to retain a shred of dignity, “Kicking & Screaming” actually accomplishes the rare feat of having us loathe the now java-frenzied Phil. His belligerent, cutthroat attitude is an exact mirror of his father, despite his over three decades of being the world’s most callow individual.

We wouldn’t be anywhere with our the requisite, sanitary moral by the film’s conclusion; I suppose I can be happy that the movie at least had a point, no made how many times this ground has been tread.

And I’m still laughing at the trailers for Ferrell’s next film, “Bewitched,” which I must concede, worries me. After all, didn’t I attend “Kicking & Screaming” for the same reason?

Will, it’s not you. It’s me.