Kicking And Screaming

Starring: Robert Duvall, Will Ferrell Original UK Premiere: 2005 Dvd Release: 21st November, 2005 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish Dubbed In: Hungarian

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Kicking & Screaming is a 2005 comedy film, directed by Jesse Dylan. // Phil Weston, is an average person who has had to endure his father Buckys over-competitiveness throughout his childhood. Phil decides to coach his sons recreational soccer team & soon finds that hes inherited his fathers desire to win. He & his team go head-to-head with the best team of the league, headed by Buck. With old scores to settle, Phil & Buck go to desperate lengths to win the championship. All his life Phil Weston has dreamed of being on a winning team. Phil. your time has come. Only one man can lead this team to victory, but that man was busy.

Will Ferrell is always funny, & the part of Phil Weston would seem to be tailor-made for his comedic antics. Phil's basically a little boy in a man's body, a little boy who wants to finally prove himself to his father & make up for never having met the old man's expectations. Robert Duvall lends the film an importance presence & additional laughs as the highly competitive Buck Weston, sporting goods king & highly successful coach of the Youth Soccer League Gladiators team. Phil has never been able to get a leg up on his father - but certainly not from lack of effort. When he got married, his father got re-married; when he had a son, his father's wife gave birth to a son the same day. Young Sam & his equally young uncle Bucky play for the Gladiators, Buck's team, & they are all but unbeatable. Sam, though, is the proverbial benchwarmer, so Buck decides to trade his own grandson to the league's worst team. Yes, it's another team of misfits of all shapes & sizes that just need an incredible coach to take them to unsuspected glory. That coach is nowhere to be seen, & Phil ends up taking on the job.

That's when the competitive juices start flowing. The first big move Phil makes is to take on an assistant coach, his dad's neighbor & long-time enemy Mike Ditka. Iron Mike is surprisingly good in this film & more than holds his own beside both Ferrell & Duvall. He only takes the job to try & make Buck's life more difficult, but he soon goes about whipping the little misfits into shape. The team still stinks, but their fortunes begin to change when Ditka & Phil bring in two new players, a pair of Italian kids who were apparently born with soccer balls balanced on their feet. The team begins winning, & with every win Phil goes a little more cuckoo for cocoa puffs; his new coffee addiction doesn't really help, either. Sure, it's funny to watch Ferrell go about inspiring his team in pretty unorthodox ways, but it eventually gets to the point that the whole thing stops being funny. Even Ditka can't get behind telling the kids to cheat or break a few clavicles. Ferrell's character just goes so over-the-top that you just want to slap him; he lets the desire to beat his dad corrupt him completely, & the lack of moderation in the second half of the film is a real negative.

There are a lot of laughs to be had in Kicking & Screaming. It's exceedingly formulaic & predictable, but that doesn't matter all that much as long as the laughs keep coming. The script just takes Ferrell's character way too far over the line; watching a crazy guy coach soccer is funny, but watching a freak going bonkers on the sidelines is more annoying than anything else. The film could really have used more Ditka in the later stages. Don't go thinking this is some cameo by Iron Mike; he gets a lot of screen time, & he makes this movie better & funnier with all of his trademark habits.

In the end, Kicking & Screaming is a very funny movie, but it's not a great comedy. Despite excellent performances all around , the film is just too over-the-top for its own good. You can't say the movie tries to be anything more than it is, though - it's all about generating laughs & nothing else.

Robert Duvall is an actor, born on January 5, 1931 in San Diego, California. He studied acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. His screen debut was as Boo Radley in the critically acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbird but his breakout role was a decade later as Tom Hagen in The Godfather & The Godfather Part II. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in A Civil Action & for his role as Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Great Santini & The Apostle & won for his role in Tender Mercies. He directed the critically acclaimed The Apostle, about a preacher on the run from the law & Assassination Tango, a thriller about one of his favorite hobbies, tango. He now lives with his partner Luciana Pedraza. Lonesome Dove, a televised western saga.   at the Internet Movie Database Posters Of A Civil Action

Editors Choice: Kicking And Screaming, A Civil Action, Open Range, Secondhand Lions, A Shot At Glory, Deep Impact, Lonesome Dove, The Paper, View DVDology

Will Ferrell is a comedian, impressionist & actor who first established himself as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. Born John William Ferrell in Irvine, California, he attended the University of Southern California. After graduating in 1989, Ferrell developed his improvisation skills as a member of the comedy group The Groundlings. During his time on SNL, Ferrell made a name for himself with impressions of professional wrestler -turned- Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. His original characters included Morning Latte co-host Tom Wilkins, music teacher Marty Culp, Spartan cheerleader Craig Buchanan & night clubber Steve Butabi in a sketch that became the 1998 film A Night at the Roxbury His final performance as a regular on Saturday Night Live was May 18, 2002, in which the real Alex Trebek made an appearance at the end of the last Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch. He then followed in the footsteps of fellow SNL alumni by switching to a career focused on movies. The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Posters Of Will Ferrell

Editors Choice: Elf, Bewitched, Kicking And Screaming, A Night At The Roxbury, Anchorman, Melinda And Melinda, Old School, Superstar, View DVDology

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