I thorougly enjoyed the movie, and I was very surprised by the low rating. I don't know what people were expecting from this...they must have had images of Wil Ferrell's other movies in their heads and then judged it according to those. But even then, I vastly prefer this to Elf, which was so lifeless I couldn't finish it. This movie has a really sweet nature about it, and the rivalry between Duvall and Ditka is hilarious; it reminded me of an episode of King of the Hill, which everyone hated when it first started, but has sort of become a standard in subtle satire.
I don't know what people have against light-hearted movies these days; it's not enough to have a good time or for a movie to give you good-natured pleasure -- people would rather see something with a million quirks a second; they're afraid of liking something if it's deemed too minor. They want something that can be defended on intellectual terms. Maybe that's why the film didn't score with modern audiences: it's completely without cynicism. It's got a lot of those ridiculous, quirky one-liners, but it's not snarky or clever, which is the current mode for popular comedies -- the complete work of Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson, for example. If people actually got past the fact that this movie is very formulaic, maybe they'd realize what a light, goofy spirit it has. It has more in common with slapstick and Francois Truffaut's comedies than it does with a movie like Rushmore; and for me, it's the former that we need most.
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