'Kicking and Screaming' not Ferrell's best

"The Mighty Ducks," "The Big Green," "Little Giants" or "The Bad News Bears." You could watch anyone of these movies and get the same effect as watching "Kicking & Screaming." The fact that it follows its predecessors very closely isn't necessarily a bad thing, you just know what you're going to get before you walk into the theater.\nPhil Weston (Will Ferrell) is athletically ungifted, a characteristic that has created a wide divide between him and his father, Buck (Robert Duvall). The separation has continued into Phil's adulthood, when Buck refuses to play and eventually trades Phil's son, Sam (Dylan McLaughlin), off of his team, the Gladiators, and onto the worst team in the league, the Tigers. Phil decides to prove he can beat his father at something and becomes the coach of the Tigers.\nThe Tigers are a stereotypical ragtag bunch, featuring Byong Sun (Elliot Cho), a 2-foot tall Asian, Mark Avery (Steven Anthony Lawrence), an annoying loudmouth, etc. Phil decides to recruit talent to make the team better, bringing in assistant coach Mike Ditka and two Italian mini-Pelés (Francesco Liotti and Alessandro Ruggiero). Of course, Phil becomes more obsessed with winning than teaching life lessons, like trying your best and having fun, leading up to a championship game against the Gladiators. The rest of the movie should be pretty easy to predict at this point.\nThe plot isn't the most important aspect of this movie. The movie lives and dies by the performance of Ferrell. The death comes from Ferrell's attempt at developing a more serious side to his comedic gift, à la Jim Carrey. It just doesn't seem to work in this movie -- Ferrell comes off as very stiff and forced. There are some glimpses of potential, but there's also a lot of room for improvement.\nWhat makes this film worth seeing is when Ferrell dips into his comedic talents. The degeneration of Phil Weston into a raving madman with a major coffee dependency is hilarious. For example, when he tells the Tigers, "Break someone's collarbone, that's what the medic is for," you can't help but burst out laughing. Will Ferrell has the best comedic timing of any actor right now and it's what helps the film succeed.\nIn the end, "Kicking & Screaming" really isn't any different from its previously mentioned counterparts. It's also not Will Ferrell's best performance. But the two parts come together to make a movie that is at least worth giving a watch.