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Slam dunk for survival

By Matt Zoller Seitz
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Mar 28, 2008, Page 16

Semi-Pro pictures the 1970s as a clown's bacchanal, complete with grizzly bear wrestling, roller skate stunts and big hair.

A throwaway scene in Semi-Pro, a comedy starring Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon, the owner, coach, promoter and star of a struggling 1970s-era basketball team, boils Ferrell's macho man-child persona down to a sentence.

Before a game featuring Jackie's team, the Tropics from Flint, Michigan, the camera pans across cheerleaders at the base of a 30.5m ramp, then reveals Jackie at the top in roller skates and a helmet, steeling himself for an Evel Knievel-style jump. A courtside announcer declares, "The fact that Jackie has never been on roller skates before has apparently done nothing to diminish his confidence."

Ferrell's latest star vehicle, a raunchy, R-rated goof written by Scot Armstrong and directed by Kent Alterman, isn't as tenderhearted as Ferrell's Elf, nor does it hit the surreal peaks of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, with its jazz flute solos and gang fights between news teams. But like many of Ferrell's recent films, Semi-Pro finds the sweet spot between sports melodrama and parody, and hammers it for 90 diverting minutes.

Semi-Pro pictures the 1970s as a clown's bacchanal, complete with grizzly bear wrestling, roller skate stunts and big hair. PHOTO: COURTESY OF ARM

Jackie, a one-hit-wonder pop star turned sports impresario, is a standard-issue Ferrell type: an alpha-male doofus leading like-minded dudes (including Woody Harrelson as a former bench-warming Boston Celtic and Andre Benjamin as a selfish but talented future star) on a mission of excellence. For the Tropics that means standing out during the final season of the American Basketball Association, a down-market rival of the National Basketball Association, which merged with the NBA in 1976, with only a few teams joining the fold. If Jackie's team doesn't finish at least fourth in the league and draw 2,000 spectators a game, it won't survive the merger. Desperation and inspiration ensue.

Film Notes SEMI-PRO DIRECTED BY: Kent Alterman STARRING: Will Ferrell (Jackie Moon), Woody Harrelson (Monix), André Benjamin (Clarence), Maura Tierney (Lynn), Will Arnett (Lou Redwood), Andy Richter (Bobby Dee), David Koechner (Commissioner), Rob Corddry (Kyle), Andrew Daly (Dick Pepperfield), Jackie Earle Haley (Dukes) RUNNING TIME: 90 MINUTES TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY

Semi-Pro is no docudrama, of course. The ABA never had a team in Flint, much less an owner-coach-player who wrestled grizzlies and promised every spectator a free hot dog if his team broke 125 points. But the film does root many of its jokes in sports history. The ABA's contributions to pro basketball include the slam-dunk contest, the three-point shot and Julius Erving, nicknamed "Dr J," who played for two ABA teams, the New York Nets and the Virginia Squires. In its absurdist way, Semi-Pro alludes to all of the above - including Dr J, who seems a partial inspiration for Benjamin's character.

Like Anchorman, Semi-Pro pictures the 1970s as a clown's bacchanal, an era that saw Age of Aquarius utopianism morph into decadent brutishness. (Jackie, an exemplar of both extremes, slaps his players and threatens referees with death, yet insists that his motto is "ELE: Everybody Love Everybody.") Between its Me Decade jukebox soundtrack, sinuous widescreen photography (by Shane Hurlbut) and fetishistic period details (including the most stunning array of big hair this side of a Tower of Power album cover), Semi-Pro often plays like a wacky, sports-themed cousin of Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights.

While the film never coheres into a great comedy, it offers lively performances (including Will Arnett's foulmouthed, alcoholic, chain-smoking sportscaster, and Andrew Daly as his unflappably square partner).

And some of its gags are as insightful as they are ludicrous. One of the best finds Harrelson's player-turned-coach, Monix, setting up a tryst with his ex-girlfriend Lynn (Maura Tierney) by dispatching her boyfriend, an obsessive Monix fan named Kyle (Rob Corddry), to buy him a tube of Bengay. The poor dope forgets his wallet, returns to the house and catches the couple in the act, but does not react as you would expect. In fact, his response takes sports fandom to a whole new level.

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