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" In
'Semi-Pro,' Ferrell jumps through hoops - again " |
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Posted on
3:00 p.m. PST March 8, 2008 |
"Semi-Pro," the new Will Ferrell movie, is stuffed with
familiar frat house funnyboys - Andy Richter, Will Arnett,
Rob Corddry, David Koechner - but the funniest character is
probably the mid-1970s. The Disco Decade is the setting for
this amiably sloppy basketball comedy, and it has a
hairstyle (puffy), a rhythm
 (funk),
a material (polyester), and a flavor (Shasta Red Apple).
When some of the players sit down to play Pong, the joke is
how insanely excited they are. They're like cavemen
discovering a two-pixel fire.
The movie itself is pretty much what we've come to expect
from Ferrell, which suggests it's time to reboot the
franchise. (He must be running out of ideas; the film's a
scant 86 minutes.) The borderline-silly sport this go-round
is the "outlaw" American Basketball Association, which
really did exist for nine seasons from 1967 to 1976 before
being swallowed by the NBA. The star again plays a clueless,
graceless naif with too much body hair: Jackie Moon, the
owner of the Flint (Mich.) Tropics, who triples as the
team's power forward, publicity coordinator, and half-time
choreographer.
And again the hero suffers a comic crisis of confidence
before bouncing back against all odds, louder and more
deluded than ever. You know what you get with Ferrell, and
if you don't like it, stay away. If you do, you'll get your
laughs, but they won't be as sweet as with "Elf" or as
inspired as the ones in "Anchorman:The Legend of Ron
Burgundy," still the best movie the man's ever done.
The primary difference in "Semi-Pro" is the movie's
locker-room setting and sensibility. The R rating is for
language and a lot of creative energy has gone into new uses
for old Anglo-Saxonisms; it's one of the more memorably
potty-mouthed films in a while. This being the mid-'70s,
though, the worst thing you can call a man is a jive turkey
- that one almost starts a shoot-out.
Jackie's team is the usual assembly of post-"Bad News Bears"
screw-ups (Jackie Earle Haley - Kelly Leak himself - shows
up as a stoner fan in the stands). There's the hulking
Lithuanian (Peter Cornell), the no-talent Larry Bird
look-alike (Josh Braaten), a bunch of African-American Flint
locals, and the one decent player, Clarence "Coffee" Black,
played with sharp wit by OutKast singer Andre Benjamin.
The ABA commissioner (Koechner) announces the league's going
bust, with only four teams to be absorbed into the NBA, and
after the expected Ferrell hissy fit Jackie decides to
compete, trading the team's washing machine for the
washed-up point guard Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson).
Disappointingly, Harrelson mostly plays it straight - maybe
he saves his comic instincts for dramas like "No Country for
Old Men" - and he vows to put the team on top. OK, in fourth
place, but it's a start.
The problem with "Semi-Pro" is that it keeps forgetting it's
a parody of sports movies; the final scenes are supposed to
be uplifting (sort of) but they're not fooling anyone. The
film's much better when it just lets the guys gas and sass
each other. A bit with a supposedly unloaded gun is a
joyously dumb series of riffs on one of the oldest cliches
in the slapstick playbook.
The supporting cast is hit and miss, but they're having a
good time, especially toward the end when the team gets
divine inspiration for the Alley-Oop pass (so that's where
it was invented). I liked the sportscasting team of macho,
anal-implosive Arnett and unfailingly polite Andrew Daly;
even the way the latter corrects the others on the
pronunciation of his name - "Dick Pepperfield" - is funny.
The lone woman here is Maura Tierney as Monix's estranged
girlfriend, and she has very little to do in this boys'
night out. "Semi-Pro" falls squarely in the middle of the
tiny genre of basketball movies - it's much worse than
"Hoosiers," much better than "Celtic Pride," and about on a
par with "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh," the 1979 court
comedy that could conceivably appear on a theater marquee in
this film.
Instead, we get "Mother, Jugs & Speed" on that marquee and
wall-to-wall Average White Band and Ohio Players on the
soundtrack. That doesn't make "Semi-Pro" a great movie, but,
to quote those sages the Brothers Johnson, it does get the
funk out ya face for 86 minute.
By Ty Burr, Globe
Staff
02/29/2008
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