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DVD Sunday: Semi Pro

A pretty awful Will Ferrell movie - By Morgan, May 31, 08

Right now, Will Ferrell is the World's Greatest Comedian and he's ripe for a fall. His latest movie, Semi Pro (2008) -- although it's not as awful as everyone says it is -- is a sign that Farrell is poised to join this list of other one-time World's Greatest Comedians and now brutally, brutally unfunny men: Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Jim Carey, and Eddie Murphy.



Let's get this out of the way: Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, the owner/coach/player of a struggling ABA team, the Flint Tropics. Supporting is Woody Harrelson, in the role of Monix, who is basically playing a really serious version of his character from the movie Kingpin, and Andre Benjamin -- the guy from Outkast who apparently acts -- as Clarence "Coffee" Black. It's the standard sports misfits-must-band-together-to-save-the-team movie but it's set in the 1970s, because everything is funnier in the 1970s.

Although Semi Pro is quite obviously two or three of Ferrell's previous movies thrown together, it's also his first movie where he himself is set up as the lone source of the laughs. All his previous movies featured Ferrell in the starring role, but also reined him in, balanced him out with other funny men doing shticks, and distributed the punch lines among a group of talented comedians. Judd Apatow knows that Ferrell's characters get real stale if you stretch them over the length of a movie, Kent Alterman, director of Semi Pro, apparently does not.

In Semi Pro, Ferrell's antics are put on a stage by his chief supporting characters -- Harrelson and Benjamin -- who are essentially playing straight men to whatever half-funny thing Will Ferrell happens to be doing at a given moment. Other talented comedic actors are in the movie -- Andy Richter, David Koechner, Rob Corddry -- but for some reason no one wrote anything funny for them to say. Ed Helms for instance literally has one line and it's a set up for another Ferrell joke. Why is he even in the movie? As far as I can tell, he's there, like the other bit players, because he's in some other funny shows and the producers figure that some comedy will rub off on Semi Pro by his mere presence -- the sight of Ed Helms will release endorphins in the brains of the audience because, "hey that's the guy from The Daily Show and I like The Daily Show and Jon Stewart."

Will Ferrell is the latest in a line of comedians who has become so bankable, their comedic genius so widely recognized and accepted, that Hollywood producers feel they merely need to dress him up in a funny costume and train a camera on him for 120 minutes to turn a profit. Semi Pro is Will Ferrell completely unedited and no one on set -- not the director, the producers, his co-stars, not anyone -- stopped him and said, "hey, that's pretty good but its not really all that funny. Maybe we should try to write some stuff instead of having you improv it all. And wow, what little of this movie we did sit down to write is just plain brutal."

And he isn't the first comedian to be in this position either. Think of the last horrid Adam Sandler movies at the apogee of his comedic influence (Mr. Deeds, Little Nicky), the last horrid Mike Myers movies (any of the Austin Powers sequels), and any of the last times Jim Carey tried to be funny. Those movies, like this one, are all instances when a comedic talent is given free reign to plumb the unfunny depths of a tired gimmick. It is, of course, impossible for anyone to be funny for 120 minutes. All you need to do is ask the first World's Greatest Comedian to break on through to the unfunny side of his comic persona: Robin Williams.

Is the thought of Robin Williams trying to be funny unbearable to you? I can't even watch him trying to be funny on a talk show. Jay fucking Leno doesn't think Robin Williams is funny anymore -- thinking of Jay's fake cackle laughter makes me cringe.

And so Semi Pro could be the first of three unfunny Will Ferrell movies that will obliterate his comedic career leaving him solely with the option of trying to transform himself into a serious dramatic actor as other comedy pariahs have done before him. Semi Pro, of course, is funny in places and Ferrell is still a funny guy, but watching this movie is exactly like seeing your favorite band in concert.

It's good for about 35 mins but then you wish they'd just get off stage already so you could do something else. Grade: C-

Complementary Sherpas order: The uncanny sense that you are being cheated pervades when you see this movie. It's as if Semi Pro is the result of some kind of Hollywood contract snafu or some huge backend payoff for its star, who basically knows it's not going to be good but really wants a new yacht. I ordered McDonalds. They got the order wrong too, the bastards.

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