May 10, 2005

Just when you thought you had seen the worst movie ever made...

Club Paradise... The Majestic... The Razor's Edge... Mystery Men... Little Nicky...

It seems to happen at least once to every great comedy star.

And now, it's happened to Will Ferrell.

I have to go all the way back to Resident Evil: Apocalypse to find a studio release that was as bad and badly made. But that really isn't fair, given that the film was relatively low profile and low budget. Van Helsing was a similarly vain mess, but it wasn't as sloppily made as this film.

No, I have to go back to A Man Apart to find a movie as sloppy, arrogant and disastrously unwatchable as Kicking & Screaming.

And here's the part where I remind you that I like stupid family comedies with a lot of physical schtick.

The film isn't even a too-long SNL sketch. It has the inherently banal structure of a family underdog comedy with a father-son battle of wills thrown in. For those films to work, they need to find a strong alternative voice, as the Bad News Bears did. This film is so much nothing that all there seems to be - and all there seems to be of a script - is Will Ferrell mugging.

I mean, what can you say about a movie in which Mike Ditka is credited as the third lead... and deserves it, since he has the second most dialogue in the film. And here's the bad news... he can't act... really can't act.

I don't know if Kicking & Screaming was ever meant to be an R rated film, but it's pure family all the way now. And when the kids don't know Ditka, it is almost beyond credulity that one of the precocious tots don't recognize him for his erectile dysfunction ads.

As for the tots... they are like a road version of the real cast of the film. It's like they went into casting and said, "We need a cute little Asian kid... let's make him so small that Verne Troyer would be too tall to double him. A smart aleck? How about a kid without a chin. And as Will Ferrell's son... can we please have someone with less personality than a bar of soap?"

Robert Duvall is at his cash-raising worst. It seems like they hired the cast of Mad TV, just like those TV commercials those wacky folks are doing now. But even they are wasted. Laura Kightlinger as the tough dyke... Fat Actress' Rachael Harris as her lipstick girlfriend... Arliss' Jim Turner in a part that has been sliced to the bone... Dave Herman with a bad bald wig just so he can lose his toupee (heeeeeee-larious!)... Phill Lewis as the token black character... etc, etc, etc...

One key story element is that we believe Ferrell's character is hooked, heroin-like, on coffee. But the coffee culture is more like the valium joke in Starting Over... everyone has a fix nearby.

But it is very K&S that characters go through dramatic arcs for no apparent reason. You can virtually hear the "Try that... it'll be funny" conversation happening before every gag.

All of that would be almost acceptable if the movie was funny in any way. But it is really, really unfunny. And - especially if Bewitched goes wrong - it is very dangerous for Will Ferrell's career. The film is produced by his manager, Jimmy Miller. Oh, how can a manager do something like this to his client? This is the kind of movie that you want buried in late August or mid-February, just hoping that no one will notice you made it.

Of course, it will make a profit. It was apparently made with a home video camera and without too much lighting effort. Will Ferrell has never looked worse in a film and Jesse Dylan does him no favors by insisting on extreme close-up after extreme close-up.

The irony is that I have seen some bad notices for Monster-in-Law, which is far superior in every way and may well open behind K&S this weekend. But never fear. If K&S doesn't drop 60 percent in weekend two, nothing will.

The only thing more stunning to me than the movie I was sitting there watching was coming back to my computer and finding Scott Foundas of Variety calling the movie, "an immensely likable, funny comedy."

Scott, who I normally like and respect, should probably be disqualified from ever reviewing a slap-schtick comedy again. He remembers, "Kicking & Screaming was directed by Jesse (son of Bob) Dylan, whose previous pic, American Wedding, was easily the best and funniest in the American Pie trilogy. And while this film may lack any one set-piece to put on par with Wedding's sidesplitting French maid sequence..."

Oy.

READER OF THE DAY: B&D writes: "I've been reading you for...wow, has it been six or seven years?

Anyway, so glad to see you start the blog format. Much more active and a great way to get into your thoughts. One thing you have over other film/entertainment writers is a natural sense of seeing a film not as a free standing entity but a part of culture and the fabric of the
history of film.

The one draw back of the column, and the one thing I have felt might be keeping it from being as widely read as I think it should be was the density. Folks have a short attention on the web, blurbs do better! The blog format is perfect, don't like a topic? Scroll down!

Jeff Wells breaks up his column (and my god do I root for you over Jeff!) and I've always thought you should try that format. I know you felt that a column is a column, pick a subject and explore it...I love it but also know we, the web reader, like little tastes of lots of topics!

So, thank you for blogging. I'm not sure the red color is the right border for you, I do love the hot button blue and yellow and I think andrewsullivan.com might be a helpful site to check out to see one guys version of a successful blog. Good luck and I'll be here reading."

E-ME. Thanks for contributing to the column, B. It and the blog seem to fit well together. What say the rest of you?