Characteristically anarchic, loosely structured and unabashedly blue, Will Ferrell’s new comedy Semi-Pro rather ably skewers both second-tier professional basketball and the regrettable fashion of the early 1970s, ranking in the top half of the comedian’s personal roster of sports parodies, a list which includes Kicking and Screaming, Talladega Nights and last year’s bloated Blades of Glory.



Semi-Pro centers around Jackie Moon (Ferrell), an affable if dimwitted former singer who has parlayed and elongated the fame surrounding his one hit song into local celebrity status as the owner-player-coach of the Flint Tropics, a floundering team in socio-economically depressed small town Michigan. As part of the struggling ABA league, Moon relies more on half-time gimmicks and wild promotions to get people in the door than any actual basketball acumen.

That has to change, though, when Moon receives word of the ABA’s impending merger with the NBA, the country’s preeminent hoops conference. The Tropics have to both win games and pack the stands if they want to be one of the two teams to survive consolidation. To that end, Moon trades the team’s washing machine for Flint native and former NBA champion Ed Monnix (Woody Harrelson), and begrudgingly takes more of a backseat to he and the high-flying Clarence Withers (André Benjamin), the squad’s most talented player.

The film is the feature directorial debut of Kent Alterman, the former executive vice president of production at New Line Cinema, and a producer on small screen fare like Strangers with Candy and TV Nation. As a filmmaker, Alterman evidences a genial style neither disastrous or particularly memorable; he simply gives his actors a wide berth. As penned by Old School co-writer Scot Armstrong, many of the movie’s bigger laughs, including a Deer Hunter-inspired roulette scene and the alternately sardonic and uncomfortable asides of the Tropics’ announcers (Will Arnett and Andrew Daly), lean on the improvisational talents of its stars. More discretely scripted set piece bits (the wrestling of a bear, a lurching dance of vomitous pantomiming from Moon, who’s never before thrown up) don’t seem quite fully fleshed out. The notable exception of the latter category involves the invention of the alley-oop, now a staple of basketball highlight reels.

While Semi-Pro is not graphic in any other regards, the film’s language is willfully profane, which could be a bit of a commercial stumbling block with respect to the theatrical admittance of younger teens, though Ferrell’s core audience has presumably aged with him and won’t mind. Within the film, the issue isn’t necessarily the vulgarity itself, but the fact that it frequently seems so arbitrary, substituting for stronger jokes. A little bit less of this would go a long way.

No amount or combination of shame, absurdity and unflattering outfits seem to dint Ferrell’s fierce commitment to character, and here he again amusingly jumps through all sorts of hoops of humiliation, proving himself quite possibly the least vain actor working today — a matter which is much to benefit of his films. Harrelson, who famously displayed his hoops skills in 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump, seems perfectly at home back in this setting. As announcer Dick Pepperfield, meanwhile, the aforementioned Daly (who also appears in the forthcoming What Happens in Vegas) makes a strong, breakout impression.

Composer Theodore Shapiro’s unobtrusive score is the perfect counterpoint to energetic musical selections from the period, including songs from Barry White, The Ohio Players, Brothers Johnson, Sly & The Family Stone and Kool & The Gang. All horns and buttery whispers, meanwhile, Ferrell’s credible performance of Moon’s signature R&B-themed hit “Love Me Sexy,” produced by Nile Rodgers, is another high point. Should acting begin to bore Ferrell, he could easily make do as a lounge singer. There’s no word yet on whether Alterman and Ferrell’s flick matches Michael Moore’s memories of his hometown. No matter, though; like basketball, comedy is a game of percentages, and Semi-Pro hits enough shots to be called a winner. (New Line, R, 90 minutes)