Bad sport

>> Tired Will Ferrell basketball spoof
Semi-Pro offers few surprises

by MARK SLUTSKY

Let’s make a Will Ferrell movie. Okay, give the dude a funny name. Make him an unlikely sports hero. Give him a ridiculously inflated ego but maintain enough naïveté to keep him from being threatening or unlikeable. Put him in sexy poses that show off his not-sexy body to comic effect. Either set the film in the ’70s or give it a ’70s vibe. Awesome. We just made Semi-Pro.

Oh no, we forgot to put in any hilarious jokes! That’s okay, though, because Ferrell’s new movie doesn’t really have any. Oh, it’s got jokes, all right, lots and lots of them, but the hilariousness is missing. It’s too bad. When Ferrell busted out of Saturday Night Live a few years back, he really had something going for him. But this is just lazy. Old School, Elf, Anchorman: these were all funny movies. But the returns have been diminishing, especially as Ferrell’s been leaning so hard on the wacky sports movie genre: Blades of Glory, Talladega Nights, Kicking and Screaming.

Like Blades and Talladega, in Semi-Pro Ferrell plays an unusually sexy sports hero, in this case the owner, coach and star player of the Flint, Michigan basketball team the Tropics, Jackie Moon. Like Anchorman, he’s a disco-era oaf whose overblown sense of self gets him into trouble. In this case, it’s when his league, the American Basketaball Association, decides to merge with the NBA, leaving his none-too-popular team out in the cold.

With some teammate buddies (Woody Harrelson, André Benjamin), Ferrell sets out to save the Tropics, blah blah blah. There are plenty of talented friends along for the ride: Rob Corddry, Will Arnett, Andy Richter, David Koechner, Jackie Earle Haley and Maura Tierney all have roles, but none of them are redeemably funny. Tierney in particular you’ve got to feel sorry for, stuck as a pointless love interest for Harrelson.

You just want all of these undeniably talented people to try a little harder. Ferrell has got to take the rap here. He can be amazingly funny but he keeps returning to the same shtick and it’s getting to the point where it’s irritating. He could be funny again, if he just keeps his hands off his balls.

Semi-Pro opens this
Friday, Feb. 29

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