Where's The Will Power?

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday April 10, 2008

GLEN HUMPHRIES

SEMI-PRO (M)

Stars: Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin, Maura Tierney

Director: Kent Alterman

Screening at Greater Union Wollongong and Shellharbour, Hoyts Warrawong, Roxy Cinema Nowra

To be honest, I'm getting a little tired of Will Ferrell's schtick.

I loved his "deluded moron" role in Anchorman - I think I got a stitch from laughing so much. But, since then each successive "deluded moron" role - Wedding Crashers, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory - has been less and less funny.

There's no doubt Ferrell can act - Stranger Than Fiction showed us that - so I can't understand why he keeps returning to these lazy roles he can do in his sleep. Besides the huge pay cheque, I mean.

But there surely won't be too many of them to come once the audiences realise they're not laughing at Ferrell as much as they used to.

That said, Semi-Pro does arrest the downhill slide of Ferrell films - though only slightly. There are some funny moments (the majority of which aren't Ferrell's) but, overall, Semi-Pro is hampered by his often-tiresome schtick and an odd desire for the film to be partially serious.

Set in the 1970s, Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, a pop-singing one-hit wonder who is the owner, coach and player for the Flint Tropics basketball team in the American Basketball Association (ABA).

Needless to say, he's awful at all three roles - just like his team. However, he insists his Tropics should be one of the four ABA teams slated to join the rival National Basketball Association (NBA) in an impeding merger.

He gets serious and pushes the team to win - believing a top four finish will send them to the NBA. He even trades the team's washing machine for a former NBA benchwarmer named Monix (Harrelson). Surprise, surprise, Monix is able to turn the team around and get them on a winning streak.

Semi-Pro wants to be both a comedy and a feel-good sports story. For the underdog angle to work, we need to have characters we can care about - instead, what we have are caricatures designed to elicit laughter.

That's fine for the comedy Semi-Pro aims to be part of the time but not for a film that expects us to give a damn about what happens. In that "take me seriously" vein, the screenwriter has given Monix a love interest in Flint, Michigan.

His ex-girlfriend Lynn (Tierney) lives there and he's keen to patch things up with her. She's been added to give the Monix character a little depth but, if you exclude her freaky boyfriend, these scenes seem to belong to a totally different film.

They're so out-of-place it would have made sense to cut them out altogether. And cut out a bit of Ferrell's shenanigans, too.

GLEN HUMPHRIES

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

Back to News Index | Back to Home