'Semi-Pro' takes familiar shots at humor / LJWorld.com

Archive for Friday, February 29, 2008

By Carrie Rickey - The Philadelphia Inquirer

February 29, 2008

Movie

Mildly diverting but pretty much dispensable, "Semi-Pro" stars Will Ferrell as the coach/owner/forward of the Tropics, a Michigan hoops franchise in 1976, during the waning days of the ABA. Ferrell, a sketch comic parodying a caricature, shows few new moves, but except for a skyhook or two, his work in "Semi-Pro" is strictly amateur.

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Mildly diverting and utterly dispensable, "Semi-Pro" stars Will Ferrell as the coach/owner/forward of the Tropics, a Michigan hoops franchise in 1976, the waning days of the American Basketball Association.

It was an era of expansive hair, abbreviated shorts and a roundball resembling a gumball.

It was also an era of funk music. From the proceeds of his Barry White-lite hit, "Love Me Sexy," Jackie Moon (Ferrell) buys the Flint-based Tropics, cellar-dwellers whose few fans number potheads and head cases. Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" and LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade" drive the film with considerably more horsepower than Ferrell's one-trick-pony performance.

Jackie's hopes are as high as his 'fro and his IQ as low as his points-per-game average. When he learns that at the end of the season the ABA will be dissolved, its four top teams absorbed into the NBA, Jackie challenges his squad to fight its way to fourth place, which is a considerably longer shot than a three-pointer.

As yet another benign lunatic in competitive sports (see "Blades of Glory," "Kicking and Screaming," "Talladega Nights"), Ferrell has no new moves. So, he (and his enabler, director Kent Alterman) try to coax laughs by presenting Jackie as a neuter who imagines himself as a sex god. See Jackie pose nekkid as a Playgirl centerfold, a strategically placed basketball shielding his basket.

"Semi-Pro" sporadically comes alive when Woody Harrelson as Monix, a onetime NBA player, bounces onto the court. Movie geeks will appreciate the casting, as Harrelson, himself a semi-pro at playing benign lunatics in competitive sports (see "White Men Can't Jump," "Kingpin," "Play it to the Bone") more or less invented the type that Ferrell has spent a career parodying.

Harrelson is an actor playing a character. He takes his whack job role seriously, and this provokes laughs.

Ferrell, a sketch comic parodying a caricature, evidently thinks that spouting a 10-letter epithet is intrinsically funny. It's not. I loved Ferrell in "Stranger than Fiction," liked him in "Old School" and "Talladega Nights." Yet except for a skyhook or two, his work in "Semi-Pro" is strictly amateur.

Ferrell and Harrelson have some chemistry, but the movie's funnier sequences involve Harrelson and Maura Tierney as his ex. Andre Benjamin (yes, Andre 3000 of OutKast) is charming in a featured role as the Tropics' most promising player, and Jackie Earle Haley, more out there than Cheech and Chong put together, is genuinely funny as the Tropics' No. 1 fan.