Semi-Pro
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Movie Reviews of Semi-Pro
Movie Review: bleh
Summary: 2 Stars
it was pretty boring and i stopped paying attention to it...his other movies were way betterMovie Review: Has Ferrell Made The Circuit of Possible Sports Lampoons Yet?
Summary: 1 Stars
What a dreadfully unfunny comedy! Has Will Ferrell made the circuit of sports he can lampoon yet? Can he move on to some different characters and some different ideas that might make us laugh instead of recycling the same character, the same situations, and the same supporting cast in film after endless film? No, I guess he could do a baseball comedy and a football comedy. Better yet, he could do a comedy about football players who get thrown out of the NFL and decide to start a baseball team, so they can stay together and compete together, maintaining their brotherhood. Jeez. I should just shut up. I have a feeling the new Will Ferrell comedy will be announced tomorrow; a film about baseball players who are banned from the sport and have to form a football team in order to stay together and play together, in order to maintain their brotherhood. Coming Summer, 2009. I just lost some money.
"Semi Pro", the newest Will Ferrell comedy was announced just after the release of "Blades of Glory", the more memorable, funnier film starring Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival ice skaters who are forced to compete together against Will Arnett and Amy Poehler's incestuous brother-sister team. At that time, I heard a collective groan. Really? Another sports comedy? Well, calling "Semi Pro" a comedy is being far too kind to this film. This film makes "Blades of Glory", which has some laughs but is still far from great, look like the comedy equivalent of "Citizen Kane".
There are a number of things wrong with "Semi Pro", but first, a look at the story.
Jackie Moon (Ferrell), a disco performer with one hit to his credit, uses that windfall to buy the Flint, Michigan Tropics, a basketball team in the ABA. Jump forward a few years to 1976 and Jackie is excited to learn the ABA will be absorbed into the NBA, but the NBA only wants four teams and the low-attendance Tropics isn't one of them. Jackie gets the owners to agree to let the top four ABA teams go to the NBA, so he returns home and tries to psyche up his bad team. They freely admit they will never reach the top four, but Jackie's confidence is inspiring. He can't let down his rag-tag team of players, including Clarence "Coffee" Black (Andre Benjamin) (Har! Har!) and Monix (Woody Harrelson), a player who has seen better days but hungers to get back into the NBA. As soon as Monix arrives back in town, he looks up his old girlfriend, Lynn (Maura Tierney) who is now living with one of Monix's clueless fans, Kyle (Rob Cordry). Then the owners throw in a twist; they will only consider franchises with an average attendance of over 2,000 fans per night. Jackie won't admit defeat and puts together some crazy promotions to lure in the fans.
Perhaps the biggest problem with "Semi Pro" comes in the filmmakers' conceit that simply dressing the characters up in funny clothes and surrounding them with the icons of the era will make the film funny. The characters do little that would qualify as funny. Apparently, the ABA had a history of staging elaborate and wacky promotions, to lure people into the stadiums. This is the main thrust of the shenanigans Jackie gets involved in. But the set-ups are painful and the comedy falls flat.
The characters say virtually nothing, beyond Moon singing his famous song that would qualify as funny. Ferrell plays his stock character, an egotistical blowhard who is desperate to maintain his status and will do anything to make it happen. So Jackie stages elaborate promotions. But his character is simply pathetic and desperate. Because he doesn't realize either, it makes his character sad when the filmmakers probably intended this to create laughs.
And the film is rated `R' for language that doesn't make the film particularly biting, funny, or tasteless in a Farrelly Brothers type of way. To simply hear the characters uttering the F Word repeatedly does not make the characters funny. I am having trouble figuring out why this was even done. An `R' rating means a large number of teenage boys who aren't industrious enough to sneak into the theater will not be allowed to see this film. This is Ferrell's core audience and will, no doubt, hurt the film's box office. Because there is no gross out or raunchy humor to justify the `R', what purpose does it serve?
Then there is the Will Ferrell problem. With the lone exception of "Stranger Than Fiction", Ferrell has been playing the same character since he made his big breakthrough in "Elf". In "Talladega Nights" and "Blades of Glory" he plays essentially the same character; athletes who are so enamored of themselves they do everything they can to stop a potential threat to their current status. Now, with "Semi Pro", he adds Jackie Moon to this roster. Each character is remarkably similar; dumb egotistical blowhards who surround themselves with adoring nincompoops. It was mildly funny in "Talladega Nights" and mildly amusing in "Blades of Glory", but now in "Semi Pro" there is a definite `been there, done that' feeling to everything we witness on screen. It just seems so recycled. And boring. I almost long for the days of "Bewitched". My body just tremored uncontrollably in horror.
How much money does one man need? Hasn't Ferrell collected enough $20 and $30 million dollar paychecks? Ferrell is a funny guy, but he needs to branch out, take some chances, and work with some new people around him. In "Stranger Than Fiction" he did just this, and the result was a strange, funny, unusual film. But it didn't make huge box office and I think that was because people are so used to seeing the comedian portray the sports buffoon. When they realized this wasn't going to be a part of "Fiction", many people stayed away. But for those who took a chance, along with Ferrell, we were rewarded with a funny, unusual, touching performance in a much underrated film. And the actor also got a chance to work with Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Queen Latifah.
I think Ferrell could safely alternate his film choices, and filmmakers would be happy to have him in their projects. He should and could adopt a strategy like many others; make one `box office' picture for every `other' film. So for every "Semi Pro", we would get a "Stranger Than Fiction". This would lead many more to appreciate Ferrell's work. And his work would become richer due to the exposure to a more diverse group of directors. Just looking at the cast and crew who have worked on his films, you realize he likes to work with friends and people he is familiar with. This is admirable, but when this results in the same film repeatedly, it is time for the comedian to venture a little out of his circle of familiarity.
With each of these `sports-themed' comedies, the number of home-runs has dwindled to such a sorry state it is difficult to remember the films at all.
Movie Review: "Semi-Pro" is All-Bad
Summary: 1 Stars
*1/2
"Semi-Pro" is an aggressively unfunny dumb-jock comedy that marks a possible low point in the careers of Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson and Maura Tierney (although the latter, lucky for her, is not really in the movie long enough to do her reputation permanent damage).
It's the 1970's and the short-lived American Basketball Association (1967-1976) is getting ready to close its doors due to a lack of money and little interest on the part of the three major networks in televising its games. However, four of the league's top-ranking teams will remain intact and be absorbed into the more successful NBA. That means that the Tropics, the fictitious team from Flint, Michigan, will soon be disbanding, unless the players can get their act together and reverse their current losing streak. Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, who doubles as both the head coach and one of the key players on the Tropics. As such, it's his job to whip the players into shape if the team is to have any hope of becoming one of the chosen four.
Here is a movie in which literally nothing works - not the concept, not the performances and certainly not the writing. Indeed, the makers of "Semi-Pro" seem to think that merely throwing the decidedly doughy Ferrell into a basketball uniform and having him shooting hoops with a bunch of equally dweeby knuckleheads would be just too hilarious for words. It isn`t. In fact, in this movie virtually every joke, pratfall and sight gag lands on the court with a resounding thud, despite the best efforts of its hapless cast. I guess the one lesson to be gleaned from all this is that funky fashions and quaint `70's references alone are not enough to carry a movie, especially when one is stuck with a script as devoid of taste, imagination and humor as the one Scot Armstrong has come up with here.
And, of course, as appears to be the case with all the worst comedies, "Semi-Pro" finds it necessary to end with an outtake blooper reel, on the bizarre assumption that if we didn`t laugh at any of the bits that DID make it into the final product, then we will somehow fall on the floor in hysterics at all the ones that DIDN`T. Sorry, fellas, but I believe I gave my all by sitting through the actual movie to be still hanging around seeing what I missed.
Dopey and depressing.
Movie Review: Semi-Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
I am just about speechless at how a movie as inept as this one could even get made. Where was the script? Did these guys even have one? The movie should have been entitled, "Talented Actors Waste Time in Making Semi-Pro."
Supposedly, this movie is about a semi-pro team from Flint, Michigan, who played in the ABA(?). If they could finish in the top four of the league, they stood a chance of being absorbed when the NBA/ABA merged. There's only one problem: there WERE no semi-pro teams in the ABA and certainly not one from Flint, Michigan. And if you think the NBA will accept your team because you "average 2,500 fans a game," I've got a nice bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
What's even more laughable is this is actually being referred to as a sports movie. PUH-LEEZE. There is more action in watching paint dry than there is happening in this movie. This basketball team performed more dance routines than ran plays. Yeah; that happens ALL the time in the NBA. Why I hear that Shaq and LeBron have just finished their interpretive dance classes. Woody Harrelson and Andre Benjamin's talents were totally wasted, and I've always been on the fence about Mr. Ferrell. Suffice it to say that I've now fallen on a definite side. The language didn't bother me--it was all the other dialogue that came before/after the language that did. Simply AWFUL.
Movie Review: The Worst Movie I've Ever Seen
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me start by saying that I love bad movies. I appreciate when a film is so unable to be taken seriously that it winds up being funny, or adds to the value of its badness.
Then there are movies with huge stars, enormous budgets, and awful stories. These are movies which truly suck. Months ago I thought Spiderman 3 was the worst a movie could get, but it got on its knees and gave the cake to Semi Pro.
I enjoy Will Ferrell in Old School, Night at the Roxbury, SNL, etc. But this time he has gone too far. I can't begin to explain the brainlessness of every word spoken in the film. I did not laugh once. My friend fell asleep next to me. I only decided to watch the entire thing so that I could say that it is the worst movie I've ever seen.
THERE IS NOTHING REDEEMING ABOUT THIS FILM
I recommend this only to people looking to regret watching it, or those looking to find their own personal new Worst Movie Ever.