Ferrell as silly Will, peewee soccer dadFerrell a winner as lovable shlub turned cutthroat soccer dad

Warm and fuzzy - and flabby around the midsection - Phil Weston (Will Ferrell) is a mild-mannered family man with a wife, a son, a vitamin shop, and a major chip on his shoulder.

In Kicking & Screaming, the chip comes by way of his dad, a Type-A guy who never had any patience for his sports-challenged progeny. Humiliated at every turn by his super-competitive pop - played, in a Great Santini send-up by Robert Duvall - Phil has chosen a different path through life. Sensitive, supportive and full of New Age aphorisms, Phil encourages his boy to simply enjoy himself out on the soccer field - never mind winning.

The problem is, young Sam (Dylan McLaughlin) doesn't even get on the field. The coach - who happens to be his grandfather - keeps him sitting on the bench. And then he gets traded to another team.

A movie about peewee-league sports and all those overbearing parents on the sidelines, Kicking & Screaming is yet another low-budget, high-concept vehicle for Will Ferrell to say and do dumb stuff, throw hissy-fits, get punched in the face, and find redemption (as both a dad and a son). If the comedy, directed by Jesse Dylan (of American Wedding) from a screenplay by Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick (the brains behind The Santa Clause), is loose and sloppy and full of Bad News Bears cliches, that doesn't matter. Ferrell's mock-dim persona is the reason for Kicking & Screaming's existence.

Watching him sew black tiger stripes on his blue jogging suit - his son's new team is the Tigers, and Phil's their new coach - and then inspire his motley crew of 10-year-olds to another humbling defeat with a lame-o speech, Ferrell seems like the unlikeliest of movie stars. His face is mush, his pratfalls lack finesse, he's a lumbering oaf. But he speaks to the lumbering oaf in us all - and then makes us laugh.

The rivalry between Ferrell's Phil and Duvall's Buck plays out in a series of bad-wigs-and-vintage-threads flashbacks, and in backyard barbecues where Phil, now a grown man, can still do nothing right in his father's squinting, glinting eyes. And then, as anyone who has seen the trailer knows, Phil's team gets to face Buck's team in the soccer league championship.

Decades worth of suppressed rage bubbles to the surface, and overflows, as Phil becomes even more driven and bent on victory than his dad.

For soccer aficionados, Kicking & Screaming boasts some fairly cool play, courtesy of Alessandro Ruggiero and Francesco Liotti, two kids who play "the Italians" - young ringers hired by Phil and his assistant coach (football legend Mike Ditka, as himself) to add some serious talent to the team. And for anyone in Hollywood thinking of doing a live-action version of The Simpsons, grab kid actor Steven Anthony Lawrence fast. As one of the fast-talking, slow-moving Tigers, he's a dead ringer for that brat named Bart.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/stevenrea.

Kicking & Screaming

** 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Jimmy Miller, directed by Jesse Dylan, written by Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick, cinematography by Lloyd Ahern, music by Mark Isham, distributed by Universal Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 mins.

Phil Weston. . . Will Ferrell

Buck Weston. . . Robert Duvall

Barbara Weston. . . Kate Walsh

Himself. . . Mike Ditka

Parent's guide: PG (mild profanity, crude humor)

Playing at: area theaters