Semi-Blow

Semi-Pro was simply painful to watch. When it comes to movies, there is nothing worse than a bad comedy. If you're watching a bad action film, there can still be some thrilling moments if it contains some competently performed stunts. If the hero successfully outruns the fireball, you find yourself momentarily overlooking the time when you questioned how the terrorists were going to take over the country by putting marshmallows in the water supply or the stupid dialogue like, "If we don't do this, it won't get done by us." It doesn't work that way in comedy though. Something is either funny or it's not funny. There's no middle ground. A movie can be mildly exciting, somewhat sad, or a little frightening and you may still walk away thinking, "Well, it could have been worse." In comedy, it doesn't work like that. Oh sure, you may get a mild chuckle when, say, a little kid tries to flush a ham down the toilet but mild chuckles don't cut it which is bad news for Semi-Pro, a movie just chock full of mild chuckles.

Semi-Pro takes place in the year 1976 so right off the bat you figure you'll be getting jokes about polyester suits, disco and afros. Sure enough, Will Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, a guy with an afro who wears polyester leisure suits and owns a disco. I wondered why Ferrell would return to the 70s after he did Anchorman, another movie set in the 70s that already made all these jokes. Unfortunately for him, he was forced to go back to the Carter years by the stupid plot. Turns out Jackie Moon owns a losing basketball team in the ABA at a time when that league is about to merge with the NBA. We're told that the NBA will only take the top 4 ABA teams into its league and that the rest of the teams will cease to exist. As I was watching this, I was wondering if there actually had been a second basketball league called the ABA and if they really did merge with the NBA in 1976 and, golly gee, there was. It is very bad news for this movie that I was thinking this as the movie was playing instead of after it was over. I should have been too busy with all the hysterical laughter. Instead, I'm thinking that I can't wait to get home and fire up The Google.

Anyway, Jackie Moon is a horrible basketball coach but he tries to make up for it by being a wonderful promoter. Well...that's the claim constantly being made by the people in the movie. His promotional stunts such as having him perform his (fictional) hit disco/funk song, "Love Me Sexy," and doing a daredevil jump over his cheerleaders on roller skates actually result in mostly empty stands. Things don't turn around until Jackie (amusingly) trades his washing machine for washed-up former NBA player Ed Monix, played by Woody Harrelson. This leads to a whole side plot where Monix tries to get back with his old girlfriend and leads to one of the few laughs where her current boyfriend is such a huge fan of the basketball player that he's actually turned on when she starts cheating with Monix.

I went into this movie expecting to like it which is another reason I want to slap its face. Will Ferrell seems best suited to play what, fortunately for him, is known as the Will Ferrell Character. The WFC is a man who has attained a nearly mythic stature in whatever glamorous profession he happens to do, be it an anchorman, race car driver, or whatever. The WFC is also both a complete narcissist who's also a complte doofus. In Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory, the WFC formula has produced successful and often surprisingly funny results. In the case of Semi-Pro, it's almost as if slapping crazy wigs onto Will Ferrell and having him manically shout all his dialogue isn't an automatic formula for box office success and I don't think any of us wants to live in a world where that's the case.