The verdict arrived at by critics who reviewed Semi-Pro was this: Will Ferrell needs a new schtick. Bloggers echoed that sentiment; many who said they had loved Anchorman and Talladega Nights found the Ferrell formula -- take a sport (soccer, NASCAR, figure skating, basketball), toss in a supporting cast of recurring B-list comedians (David Koechner, Rob Corddry, Will Arnett) and a funny haircut, and give Ferrell's persona, the self-serious, out-of-touch, manic, ultimately sweet man-child, room to shout and take off his clothes and act as wacky as he can -- tiresome this time around.
Even sports columnist Bill Simmons chimed in with a negative review, proving once and for all that he has, in fact, watched movies other than Rocky IV and The Karate Kid. He complains that Hollywood has turned the sports genre into a "formulaic machine." But, in reality, that's what the genre always has been; some sports movies are good and some are bad because sometimes the machine runs smoothly (as it did in Rocky IV and The Karate Kid) and sometimes it malfunctions.
Semi-Pro, it's true, isn't as good as Talladega Nights. I'm not sure, however, that Will Ferrell needs a new schtick. I don't believe that a comic persona must, after a decade or so, get old. Groucho Marx used the same persona from start to finish, and he's as beloved thirty years after his death as he was when A Night at the Opera was released. Ferrell isn't as good as Groucho was, but his schtick is a pretty good one, and, as a fan of sports movies, I have no desire to see him desert the genre. I'm not willing to abandon hope in him solely because this movie is sub-par. I don't think he's on a decline -- he's always been hit-and-miss. Semi-Pro is better than its predecessor, Blades of Glory, which wasn't as good as Talladega Nights; Talladega Nights surpassed the one before it, Kicking & Screaming, which was roughly on the same level as Semi-Pro. Ferrell goes up and down. Right now, the machine just needs to be oiled.
In Semi-Pro, Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon, whose disco hit "Love Me Sexy" allowed him to purchase an ABA franchise, the Tropics of Flint, MI, where he serves as player, coach, and owner. Jackie's promotional gimmicks -- free corn dogs, jumping over cheerleaders in a roller skating stunt reminiscent of Evel Kneivel -- attract a few spectators, but the team's only points come from showboat Coffee Black (André Benjamin, née 3000, of Outkast), and their sloppy basketball has rendered Moon's franchise unpopular and unprofitable. Things look up when Jackie hears a rumor that the ABA may merge with the NBA. Unfortunately, the merger is not to include the Tropics, who will disband -- unless they turn around their season and finish with one of the top four records in the league. A newly determined Jackie trades his team's washing machine for former Celtics benchwarmer Monix (if he had a first name, I don't remember it), played by Woody Harrelson, who, like Ferrell, has been in better sports comedies. The veteran Monix teaches the ragtag outfit a few fundamentals, all the while trying to rekindle a romance with an old flame (Maura Tierney).
The movie has a few laughs. The poker game that morphs into Russian roulette is very good, and a few lines have an off-center humor, as when Jackie casually advises his new player that, if he sees an opossum wandering around the locker room, he should "kill it. It's not a pet." But the script by Scott Armstrong, who co-wrote Ferrell's best movie, Old School, is slack; it doesn't pack in enough comedy to bolster the sports formula. Perhaps there is an expectation that Will Ferrell needs only an outline, that improvised antics will animate the dead spots. But think what greater effort must have gone into the script of Anchorman, where the writers imbued Ron Burgundy with details that made him a much richer comic character than Jackie Moon. Burgundy came equipped with his doted-upon dog, a well-established affection for scotch, and a substantial love interest; Jackie Moon doesn't even explain why his mother (Patti Labelle) is black. The supporting characters, likewise, are not able to stand in for Jackie effectively. It is essential, in a sports comedy, to include memorable teammates. In this respect, Major League, which had just the right mixture of one-note goofballs and slightly more developed personalities, is the movie to emulate. I remember nearly the whole roster of the 1989 Cleveland Indians, but I can name only three of the Flint Tropics. Semi-Pro's pacing, too, is poor, and it lumbers to the final game -- or what the players keep insisting is the final game, though they're clearly in playoff position. Monix's underdeveloped romantic subplot just slows the movie down. In Major League, Renee Russo, in the precise role played by Maura Tierney here, had significantly more lines than Tierney does, and although her scenes were a little dull, they didn't seem entirely useless; Tierney's do.
My last complaint is that, if you were to judge by this movie, you'd think the ABA was the Slamball of the '70s, a joke of a league, where just about anybody could sign up to play. It seems unfathomable that the NBA would want to merge with such an organization. The real ABA was a legitimate alternative, and several of the greatest athletes in 1960s and 1970s basketball played there, including Julius Erving, Rick Barry, Moses Malone, Dan Issel, Bobby Jones, and Connie Hawkins.
But, then, the real Cleveland Indians didn't make it to the ALCS in 1989.
