Kicking & Screaming
The new Will Ferrell soccer-dad comedy "Kicking & Screaming" is a pretty sloppy affair, but it has just enough big laughs to put it over, and it's unnervingly on target about the psychology of suburban parenthood. It knows that if you look at a bank of wincing fathers on the sidelines of a grammar school playing field, you're seeing grown men reliving the agonizing inadequacies of their youth.
In particular, the movie understands that almost every man has once lived in fear of an alpha-dog sports Nazi, whether a coach (usually), a peer (often), or a father (worst of all). And it knows how that quaking-but-enraged kid still lurks a micron beneath the surface of your average mild-mannered, midlevel, minivan-driving corporate dad. A nudge is all that's needed to send such a man over the edge, and in "Kicking & Screaming" that nudge is coffee.
Ferrell's Phil Weston is a worst-case scenario: an all-thumbs nice guy with a jock father who thinks winning is everything and his son's a nothing. Phil is married to Barbara (the lovely Kate Walsh, given little to do) and manages a small-town vitamin store; his dad (Robert Duvall) runs the sporting goods emporium and appears in TV ads crowing that "he's Buck Weston and he's got balls." Buck also coaches the local soccer team and keeps his 10-year-old grandson Sam (Dylan McLaughlin) warming the bench. (His own kid by a second marriage is the team star, of course.)
"Kicking and Screaming" shifts into gear when Sam gets traded to the last-place Tigers and Phil decides to coach the team. There follows a lot of "Bad News Bears" buffoonery -- one of the kids is a worm-eating freak! Another's a hulking giant! Another's a midget Asian! Whee! -- but if the gags are retreads, they're also fairly foolproof. The movie also has a secret comedy weapon it doesn't use nearly enough: Steven Anthony Lawrence as Avery, the team slacker with a freakishly middle-age face and a gleefully malicious sense of mischief. Staggering through his round-the-field laps, Avery wheezes, "God, I'm in bad shape for 11."
Phil is boiling with anger toward his father and everyone knows it except him; that's the joke that propels the movie forward in fits and starts. Fueled by a midlife discovery of triple-strength caffe lattes, he becomes obsessed with the soccer standings; to beat the odds, he brings in two pallone-playing Italian kids as ringers and hires Mike Ditka as his assistant coach. Yes, the Mike Ditka, who in the movie lives next door to Buck and has a longstanding rivalry with the old man. In a full-fledged supporting role as himself, the former coach of the Chicago Bears gamely spoofs the steamrolling macho of sports guys everywhere.
"Kicking & Screaming" is rather shakily directed by Jesse (son of Bob) Dylan, who possibly knows something about larger-than-life fathers. (For instance: How weird must it be to direct a kid named after your dad?) It would have been nice if someone had included a script, too. Instead, the "Santa Clause" team of Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick provide situations for the star to horse around in.
The results are more "Saturday Night Live" than "Elf." Ferrell's comic specialty -- big, insecure, beady-eyed doofi -- has always had about a 50/50 laugh-to-uncomfortable-silence ratio, and "Kicking & Screaming" falls well within that zone. It's a family movie and mostly fine for kids, but the scene in which the team has to butcher a side of beef (don't ask) may cause some little jaws to stop mid-gummi worm. And the bit where Phil and Buck engage in a high-stakes tetherball match? Sorry -- flabby, hairy, middle-age men with tetherball welts are more gross than funny.
Against that are the undeniably priceless scenes toward the end, after Phil has soared over the edge to become the worst soccer Nazi of them all and before the sentimental wrap-up the movie's genre requires. Civilized restraint gone, Ferrell turns every sports-fairness mantra inside out and exposes its banal hypocrisy. "Play dirty if you have to, but don't get caught," he barks at the kids, then sends them onto the field with "All right, let's break someone's clavicle -- on three!"
"Kicking & Screaming" is just subversive enough to insist that this is what your kids' coaches mean, no matter what they say.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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