The "soccer mom goes berzerk" mentality, where parents overtake their children in their enthusiasm for youth sports, is rife
with comic possibilities. Just last week, "South Park" had Stan's dad getting drunk at the Little League games and fighting with dads from the opposing teams -- all while the children themselves tried to lose, because they hate baseball. The makers of "Down and Derby" will not be happy that I invoked the vile name of "South Park" in a review of their sunny, squeaky-clean comedy, but them's the facts: "South Park" addressed the issue cleverly, while "Down and Derby" is imbecilic, unreasonable and wretchedly unfunny. It begins unpromisingly but with salvageable ideas; however, as early as the 30-minute mark, it has squandered its remaining opportunities and given itself over to full-blown irritation. The subject is not Little League or soccer but the pinewood derby, the annual Cub Scout tradition where the boys make small cars out of blocks of wood to race down a short track. As with all sports, the real-life joke is that the dads are often more competitive about it than the boys are, sometimes offering more than merely "supervision" in the design and creation of the cars.
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