zero stars

Rating: 1/10 (12 January 2005)

Being an American entails watching people robotically tell themselves they like something that a marketing dept told them they like, and/or insisting there are laughs in the last few horrible Will Ferrell vehicles. The bits here are strenuously unfunny. The movie is a schlocky piece of garbage lifting garbage-y ideas from other garbage-y movies. This movie doesn't have an inch of redeeming celluloid. Every copy of it should be collected and dumped into some live volcano. Then we should all pity the volcano...
Favreau made it for his adolescent daughter. It is over-ripe maudlin, sentiment that stinks worse than the dirty diaper you stepped in, in the Red Lobster parking lot last week.
Zooey Deschanel gives Diane Keaton a run for her money in the "actresses who should never be allowed to sing... EVER" sweepstakes.
This is dreck.