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| Semi-Pro Grade: C- by Phil Bowles |
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OK, I'll admit it: Will Ferrell has always made me laugh. I think, though, that at this point, his shtick as the bumbling, overly-confident, and eventual heroic head of whatever organization he may be lampooning in his latest flick has run completely out of steam. After Anchorman, Anchorman on Ice (known to the public as Blades of Glory), and Anchorman in a Car (known to the public as Talladega Nights), we now have Anchorman Plays Basketball, retitled appropriately as Semi-Pro. Ferrell heads a team of semi-pro (gasp!) players in Flint, Michigan in the late 1970 that is in danger of being shut down if the current season does not go well. If it does, they'll be absorbed into the NBA.
I don't want to even talk about the movie plot anymore. Go rent Anchorman or any of its aforementioned indistinguishable clones if you want to know what happens. What this film proved to me is that Will Ferrell, even with the saving grace that was Stranger Than Fiction, is a one-trick pony. He plays one character very well, and has made numerous movies showing this, but take note: Jim Varney did the same thing with Ernest P. Worrell, and that character wore out his welcome faster than MC Hammer's parachute pants. (Side note: If anyone actually still wears these on a regular basis, I'll pay 10 bucks to the first person to send a video to ChefDiesel.com of you doing that crazy dance he did. You know what I'm talking about...the shuffle-y thing.) For all my disparaging remarks though, Semi-Pro did have some funny moments. I loved the poker scene between Ferrell and the news casters, with Tim Meadows providing probably the best cameo I've seen in a while. The R-rating on the picture also seemed to give the team working on it quite a bit of creative license with swearing, which, while funnier than the standard "pirate hooker" jokes from Anchorman, almost seemed out of place. I had hope for Will Ferrell going into this movie. It had not been faring well at the box office, and my impression was that this was due to the R-rating. This was not the case though, and should this crew decide to kick a dead horse once more, which will probably happen, I'd avoid it as much as this movie avoided success.
Another side note: Before the film started, a trailer for Mike Meyer's new movie, The Love Guru, was played. I'm beginning to see a trend here...Will Ferrell is the idiotic over-confident hack, and Mike Meyers is the weird foreigner who's going to impart on us some knowledge about ourselves while making us laugh. This one looks like another fail-factory in the making...but we won't know until it gets released. On the upside, it DOES have Jessica Alba. Oh wait...
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