Should have been rated R for language and content (Possible spoilers)

Rating: 2/10 (9 December 2006)

Will Ferrell's movies are hit or miss. I thought I would never see another one after Superstar but I was pleasantly surprised by "Elf" and "Kicking and Screaming". Well, this one goes down as a miss. It seemed like it got progressively stupider after the first third of the movie. Even with parental guidance and children in the movie, most of the dialogue was very inappropriate for children. However, there were three standout performances: 1) Gary Cole as the absent drunken father of Will Ferrell. He always manages to make his characters memorable from Mr. Brady to the annoying boss Lumburger in Office Space. 2) The character of Ricky Bobby's mother. She was a no nonsense grandmother! 3) The camera action during the races. There was one scene in particular in the race that equals the bullet scene in "Three Kings", the long shot in "Snake Eyes" and a host of other creative camera work seen in movies. It gave me a newfound respect for race car driving, though not enough to make me regularly watch it. But if I was a Nascar fan, I would nave been disappointed with all the filler material outside of the racing.
P.S. It was also one of those movies where the outtakes were better than the actual movie.