Soccer bomb

That little bit of Will Ferrell slumming, impersonating Woody Allen in the Woodman’s latest, “Melinda and Melinda”?

Never happened. Or it might as well never have.

With “Kicking & Screaming,” Ferrell gets back to the bread and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s- Not-Butter hackwork of all “Saturday Night Live” alumni – bad, recycled “character” comedies.

“Kicking” is a “Bad News Bears”/”Mighty Ducks”/”The Big Green” knockoff, with director Jesse Dylan’s camera desperately focused on Ferrell, in extreme close-up, relying on him to do something funny to distract us from the staleness that surrounds him. That Ferrell can crank his perpetually sissy man-child persona up enough notches to land laughs in this is a tribute to just how funny he can be, script or no script, even in a movie directed by the slacker who handled “American Wedding” and “How High.”

Still, there are novelties in this story of turning a losing soccer team into winners. Ferrell plays Phil, an overly sensitive dad and soccer coach who longs to show up his father, a heartless sports fanatic played by the great Robert Duvall in a squishier version of his sadistic military dad turn from “The Great Santini.”

Duvall’s Buck Weston is the sporting goods store-owner/coach who kept his own kid on the bench. This jerk once swiped a soccer ball the great Pele kicked into the stands out of the hands of his boy, whom he still calls “Philly.”

Priceless.

Ferrell’s accomplice for bringing his son’s team of losers, the Tigers, up to daddy Duvall’s level is none other than that model of coaching restraint, Mike Ditka. Da Coach makes Phil “man up.” He nags him to drink coffee, to push and abuse his players – an underdeveloped slice of kiddie sports movie “types” – until they perform.

But only when a couple of Italian ringers show up do the Tigers start to win.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

Ferrell earns his pay here, improvising, mugging for the camera, melting down over his new caffeine addiction, forever finding new ways to lose to his hyper-competitive dad.

The movie isn’t worthy of the effort.

Maybe, however, “Kicking” will turn out to be the aberration in Ferrell’s progression to movie comedy king. Maybe “Melinda and Melinda” was the first hint that he’s taking a higher road.

And maybe “Bewitched,” coming in mid-summer, will have him kicking himself for not holding out for a better soccer dad script and screaming that an Oscar winner like Duvall deserves a better director.