Setting foot on the field before the upcoming remake of The Bad News Bears is a soccer film that could just as easily be called The Terrible Tigers. It's a story we've all seen before, in one sports category or another, about a team of misfits and a hapless coach who somehow rise up to championship level. But unlike the Walter Matthau-Tatum O'Neal pic, this one is left riding the pine.
Will Ferrell is a father full of repressed rage at how his own hyper-competitive dad, Robert Duvall, reared him, pushing him to excel at sports and then benching him when his peewee soccer team was on the field. Ferrell gets his chance for payback by coaching his son's team, the last-ranked Tigers, in competition against Duvall's Gladiators. The Tigers are the stereotypical team of oddballs: the short kid, the fat kid, the kid who eats worms, etc. Helping Ferrell out is his father's sworn enemy, Mike Ditka, the Super Bowl-winning coach of the Chicago Bears. As Ferrell becomes addicted to coffee, he abandons his attitude that having fun matters more than winning, becoming a twisted version of his father.
We all know how the story will play out, and the only thing left is to go along for the ride.
With scant attention paid to the children—even to Ferrell's own son—we're left to watch the adults battle it out. Ferrell's gifts are put to great use with the weak script, but there's only so much any comic genius can do. Ditka does an equally good job portraying himself, but his lack of chops shows when paired with and against Ferrell. Duvall is the one who does the most with the hackneyed material, depicting a father who really isn't all that bad, who clearly loves his son despite being disappointed with how he's turned out. The scene where he silently watches his grandson succeed when that very success means he himself has lost is worth the ticket price.
But when did teaching children the value of hard work become villainous? Certainly having fun is important, but why is it now seen as separate and antithetical to competition? With Ferrell's character playing to both extremes—liberal "give everyone a prize no matter what" to fascist "win at all costs"—we're left with a middle-of-the-road movie, and the middle of the road is a bad place to be.