Mini Review: Kicking and Screaming

See Also: Gambit Archives

It's so well-known around these parts that I don't see many movies that I won't spend any more time on it. However, that may soon change as we've made it a goal to become re-energized Netflixers. (If we don't, we're dropping the subscription-- paying $20 a month for the ability to keep About a Boy on top of our TV for four months isn't a great value.)

And with more movies, you get more movie reviews. If you check the topic-based archive you'll find that I'm far behind the other two yahoos on this site. My problem? Lack of a clever rating system. Alex uses the Trent with some sort of inverse logic where the sum total of Trents is inversely proportional to how good the movie is. Don't ask me. wadE, on the other hand, uses a handy eleven-tier rating system (see here). Easy.

I, however, am a simple Southern boy and am not much of a math person, so I'm going to employ the following as a rating mechanism:

The Jules.

And since Jules is intrinsically a good thing, the more Jules you see (five max,) the better the movie was.

Make sense? Good. Now that we've got our ground rules set, let's start over again.

Mini Review: Kicking and Screaming

See Also: Gambit Archives

In the spirit of transparency... Will and I have a history. A couple of years back I ranked him as my favorite Saturday Night Live character, and it wasn't even close. He made me laugh like a little girl on that show, and while nervous about his budding movie career after leaving the show (that hasn't worked out so well for most people) I was excited to see him featured in full-length movies instead of four-minute sketches.

Yeah... that hasn't worked out so well. I did like his character in Old School, but he wasn't featured. Elf was fine and all, I suppose, but I have high standards for Christmas movies. Ron Burgundy? Funny in parts but not as much as I'd hoped. Walking in to see Kicking and Screaming this past weekend, I wondered: Is Will Ferrell really able to pull off lead roles in movies?

The answer: No.

A brief summary: Farrell plays Phil Weston, who has had issues with his overbearing father (played by Robert Duvall) going back to childhood, when his dad coached his soccer team. Now Phil has a chance to coach his own son, and goes up against his father in the process. Oh, and Duvall's character remarries and has another son that's the same age as his grandson so the two of them end up playing soccer against each other. Nifty.

Phil begins the movie as a reserved coach, wanting to do all the right things with his son's team. As time goes on, though, he becomes more obsessed with beating his father's team, so much so that he ends up doing many of the same overbearing things that his father had done to him. During the end of the championship game against his father, Phil realizes what he's done, tells the kids to "just have fun," ends up winning the game, repairs his relationship with his father, and, just like real life, everything ends well.

This movie just was not funny. Okay, there were a few points where I laughed, but not enough to justify calling it a comedy. Random storylines appear and then are abandoned, and Ferrell's over-the-top humor just can't be sustained for 90 minutes. A few things saved this movie from being a complete disaster:

• Mike Ditka. He wasn't that funny, but he shows up in a scene wearing the famed Bears sweater-vest and blue-blocker sunglasses, while chewing gum like a maniac. Now that was funny.
• Ferrell's transformation into a high-strung prick begins when Ditka convinces him to start drinking coffee every day. The more he drinks, the more insufferable he becomes. As a coffee addict myself, I can really appreciate that.
• The movie closes with Stevie Wonder's version of "We Can Work it Out." How did I not know this version existed? It's been around for almost 30 years. It's a great adaptation, dripping with some 70s funk that puts a breath of fresh air into a Beatles song that was great to start out with.

Half-a-Jules.

What do you think? Drop us a line at webmaster@simpleprop.com and give us some feedback. Maybe we'll even run your letters in future Gambits. 'The Daily Gambit' is updated every weekday.