A full review of the film will follow later today, but Will Ferrell’s Semi-Pro is certainly blazing more new paths with its ancillary marketing schemes. First there’s Ferrell’s in-character, costarring role with Heidi Klum in the recent, annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition (below).

Then, in moderate rotation, and I guess greatly defraying the cost of ad buys, are a series of television commercials for Old Spice deodorant in which Ferrell — again in character, as affably idiotic owner-coach-player hoops maven Jackie Moon — ad-libs about sweat, exercise and “herniated colons,” and how Old Spice is the all-important cure-all. They’re funny (despite my girlfriend’s insistence to the contrary) and in keeping with the arbitrary tone of the movie, though still a little bit diminishing. It smacks of all the cross-promotional stuff done for Talladega Nights, though a bit less artfully integrated, since part of the “joke” there was in spoofing the commercialization of racing, and its many sponsors.