Kicking and Screaming

As Jason Batman plays what seems to be every role as a character lost in the middle, Will Ferrell has been playing the same type of character for years but unlike Batman, Ferrell's niche can't really be described. As in the Anchorman films or The Campaign, Ferrell's characters are all over the place and can be beyond strange and hard to put a finger on. Throughout Will Ferrell's filmography, we are used to getting the same type of silly comedy from him but Kicking and Screaming is his most different role. In it, he is trying to be a father figure and also a motivator in a sports film. In the end, Kicking and Screaming is just too generic to work fully.

Phil Weston ( Ferrell) is the type of guy who has never been able to live up to his father's expectations throughout his whole life and was always a benchwarmer in younger days as a soccer player. After his son's soccer coach leaves the team, Phil steps in to be the coach and that also makes him the father that he never was to his son. At the same time, he is trying to win against his old man Buck (Robert Duvall) who is also a coach in the league.

Kicking and Screaming is in the same mold of the original Bad News Bears. Actually you could now say that about many sports films because Bad News Bears was such an influential movie and the influence here is even more obvious. Ferrell is someone who never had anything himself and eventually finds himself through coaching this team that is so dysfunctional but in the end, they learn how to to play a soccer somehow. Robert Duvall works as unaccredited villain who's eventually turns into the good guy at the end. Even Mike Ditka shows up as the assistant coach but really he's not given much to do and I assume he is here on name value alone and to sell some tickets.

As like "Coach Carter" of the same year, Phil makes it but in a very interesting way. In some ways, Ferrell is  pulling off some of his past character traits and the character even appears to be  channeling The Anchorman character which is not surprising considering the films were only released one year apart. Phil is a strange character no doubt and at times very unlikable. He yells at his team a lot and wants his opponents to be injured which I would think go against most parent's ethics. He does however does admit many of his wrongs in a lengthy speech near the end. We can like Coach Carter more as character but Phil Weston gives us another more silly version of the sports coach.

This movie does have a lot of soccer in it for people that are interested in that though I'm not one of those. It does produce more than it's share of chuckles and you can also say you say you saw Josh Hutcherson before his career really took off. Kids will love this movie because of the humor but it really is a mixed bag for the parents and also the teenager audience because that humor is too childish. By the end, Kicking and Screaming will have you kicking and screaming because it's kind of a mess that barely survives.

3/5

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

In every shape and form, the first Anchorman movie from 2004 was very successful. From Paul Rudd to even Will Ferrell, the film put them further on the map as actors even though Ferrell was already  on his way to getting big before. It was a very memorable movie that brought very different vibes and was a comedy unlike any other. Anchorman became a cult film in every way and something I can see living on for quite a while.

Like most sequels, and even more so with this one more than ten years after the first movie, Anchorman 2 is as forced as it gets. It's a film that die-hard fans of the series have been demanding for a while and it likely had one of the biggest promotional budgets ever which raised some questions marks for me. Even though we can still say it's above average, Anchorman 2 is still one of the most disappointing films from 2013 considering it's hype and I think it's a film that never really needed to exist.

Using the theme of everybody getting back together, the old gang of Ron Burgundy (Ferrell), Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), Brian Fantana (Rudd) and Champ Kind (David  Koechner) join back together to work for the new New York station GNN, the very first every twenty four hour news station. This new job creates problems for the gang while along the way, they make some new relationships.

As we really expect it and without it wouldn't seem the same, Anchorman 2 also provides some VERY strange behavior.  This worked very well the first time around because in some ways it was really original and kind of a cultural shock for audiences. In Anchorman 2, this craziness is still a positive mark in a way but it is just not as interesting as the first movie. The character behaviors goes in spurts and sometimes is not above average and the cultural shock can't happen this time around because it's a sequel and to my surprise, it can be a leaden thing here.

With a lot homage paid toward CNN, the plot in this new installment is much like the behavior of the characters. The plot seems smarter than first film and for a sequel it's a surprisingly original movie but it suffers from the fact it has a terrible second half. It takes a very strange and questionable turn with the Ron Burgundy character that really makes no much sense. There is also a long fight scene at the end that puts a drag on it's ending and it's such a bad second half that at times you can't figure out what's going on.

Lastly, we really wonder as audience what this film would do to it's returning characters. We knew obviously that it was going to bring that different behavior from them but we didn't know what this new plot what would do with them. Ron Burgundy is a moving character who has some depth but we've already talked about his problems in the second half. The new character that turns into Ron Burgundy love interest, Linda Jackson (Meagan Good) is a new and original character as Burgundy's co-worker at GNN but by the end of the film she is left with nothing to do. Brick Tamland is a  character that enters into a strange but very interesting relationship with a girl named Chani (Kristen Wiig). The biggest disappointments are the characters of Brian Fantana and Champ Kind who bring nothing to the film where as the first one they both did.

      
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is a mess of a film with no "rewatchability" factor. It's just a sequel we should just choose to forget. It's a sequel that makes the famous Ron Burgundy character look a different way and in a way that I don't like.

3/5