SEMI-PRO
Reviewed by Sam Hatch
The comedy stylings of Will Ferrell are admittedly divisive - you either think he's a genius or he annoys the hell out of you. I admit that I was squarely in the latter camp when he first arrived on the wheezing sketch comedy fixture Saturday Night Live. His Spartan cheerleading shtick just didn't win me over, and it wasn't until his turn as Mustafa in the Austin Powers series that I started to warm up to him.
Subsequent gut punches of hilarity such as Anchorman and Talladega Nights solidified my like for the guy, and while Semi-Pro lacks Farrell and frequent writing partner Adam McKay behind the keys (the script is credited to Old School scribe Scot Armstrong), it still comes off as a worthy bastard child of those powerhouses.
Once again, Ferrell portrays a sports personality (following recent cinematic exploits as a race car driver and figure skater) saddled with a goofy name. Jackie Moon is this film's celebrated buffoon, a one-hit pop wonder who cashes in on the success of his disco-soul tune “Love Me Sexy” (which is sickeningly catchy) and uses his royalties to purchase a minor league ABA basketball team – the Flint Tropics.
The film takes place in 1976 Michigan, as the basketball commission (headed by Anchorman co-star David Koechner) prepares to fold the minor league, leaving a small number of teams to be usurped by the NBA. Moon strikes a deal to enact a play-off to the big time, in which the top four teams at the end of the season advance to the next level.
The biggest obstacle to this dream is that the Tropics are a typical movie team of hacks, losers and players with squandered potential. Jackie sees himself as a master promoter, but most of his gimmicks (such as free corndog night) rely on the impossibility of overcoming their limitations. One such gag gone wrong is when Jackie Earle Haley's scrawny burnout Dukes scores a one-in-a-million free throw basket that earns him ten thousand dollars of imaginary prize money. Moon convinces him to take the gigantic mock check to his local bank to collect his winnings.
Not only does Jackie promote his own team, but he also plays on it. Not that he's any good, as his primary contribution is to talk a lot and screen the fact that he doesn't perform much on the court. He's also prone to halting the game for any odd distraction, and is prone to harassing the priest-slash-ref Father Pat (Matt Walsh) with promises that he will “murder his family”.
This is the mildest of the salty talk within the film, so those who are offended by saucy language or swearing for swearing's sake should steer clear of this one. Particularly abrasive (and hilarious) are the spot-on commentator characters Lou Redwood (Will Arnett) and Dick Pepperfield (Mad TV's Andrew Daly). Plenty of other great comedians highlight a number of smaller roles, so look for Andy Richter, Kristen Wiig, Rob Corddry, Ed Helms and Tim Meadows.
But perhaps one of the coolest things about this film is that while these characters and the absurd circumstances they create look to evoke as many belly laughs as possible, the other members of the Tropics team apparently do not realize that they're in a comedy. Apart from a few gags (including one funny bit involving eyeliner), the actors come at the material seriously, so instead of a straight man to Ferrell's antics, there's an entire straight team.
This includes Woody Harrelson's aging NBA champion Monix, who Moon trades into the team in exchange for an old washing machine. But the old warhorse isn't necessarily in town just to play ball, for his ex-girlfriend Lynn (Maura Tierney) lives nearby and he's eager to give it another shot. The fact that she's currently involved with a live-in boyfriend does nothing to dissuade him, and this love triangle devolves into a very funny (and very wrong) scenario.
The other big shots of this small team are Bee Bee Ellis (DeRay Davis), Scootise Double Day (Jay Phillips), Twiggy Munson (Josh Braaten) and real-life NBA player Peter Cornell as the incommunicative giant Vakidis. The player with the biggest talent is Andre Benjamin's Clarence “Coffee” Black, and he is fantastic here at elevating the product to a higher plateau.
There's a fascinating level of 70s verisimilitude at play, from the great soul soundtrack to the spot-on look of the clothing, hair and vehicles (and video games such as Pong!). These types of films generally have interchangeable workman directors, but I appreciated Ken Alterman's (primarily known before now as an executive producer on a number of films) eye for widescreen framing. There were a number of surprisingly good shots, and whenever Benjamin comes screaming down the court in slow motion, it's much better cinema than one would expect in a comedy like this.
I also appreciated that Ferrell reeled in Jackie's insanity a bit when compared with his usual characters. He does engage in a number of silly antics (like dressing up the team members as giant flamingos and palm trees, or wrestling a grizzly bear!), but he's never a jerk. In one early scene, he mentions that he's going to speak with the basketball commission about a shot at the NBA, and he actually means it! In any other movie, it would have been a loutish bit of misdirection.
And that's what really helps this film succeed in the long run, for with a ton of sports comedies out there already, it wisely sidesteps the impulse to reuse all of the ‘underdog' tropes as primary elements. Sure, the plot's still largely driven by a desire to pull the team together by the end of the season (in a race for fourth place and victory of the “Mega Bowl”!), but it never places that much emphasis on its recycled parts.
What's even better is that the final game is actually a very fun moment that is just as easy to get lost in as the critical hockey match in the film Miracle. This underscores just how disappointing last year's Balls of Fury was as a sports comedy, since for the comedy to work you still need to make the sports interesting.
If you plain ol' don't care for Will Ferrell, there's probably not much these other pluses can do to make you enjoy your time with Semi-Pro, but I can safely recommend it to fans of both his recent work and general absurdist comedy. Benjamin is also sublime here, and I look forward to seeing him in more acting roles. But just watch out, because you'll probably end up singing “Love Me Sexy” all the way home afterward.