‘SEMI-PRO” goes up for the dunk and misses the hoop, the backboard and the point. Instead, it manages to both strike out and get sacked. Whose idea was it to remake “Slap Shot” a la Jerry Lewis?
Two completely different movies strangle the laughs out of each other in an inept ’70s basketball comedy. Will Ferrell does slapstick in patterned sateen shirts and matching scarves that speak louder than the script.
For no reason, he fights a bear, rollerskates over a line of cheerleaders and has a black mom. He’s doing “Anchorman” with a ‘fro. Meanwhile, Woody Harrelson does “Slap Shot” in short shorts, playing the Paul Newman role of a crumpled but once-great player-coach of a dying team in a graveyard of a Northern city. He’s determined to exit the league, and steal his old lady, with a bang. A sure sign of a first-time director is that he can’t get his actors in line. (Why is one of the biggest movie stars working with rookie Kent Alterman? Does Tiger Woods get his clubs at Wal-Mart?)
In rust-bucket Flint, Mich., Ferrell is Jackie Moon, the player-coach-owner of a struggling team in the funky American Basketball Association, the four best teams of which are about to be absorbed into the NBA. Moon’s team, the Flint Tropics – fictional, though the merger did happen, in 1976 – is going to fold unless it can finish in the top four. Enter a former Celtics star (Harrelson) to be the new player-coach and win back his ex-girl (Maura Tierney).
Ferrell, who looks like he’s never been in the vicinity of a basketball before, screams and whines and vigorously pukes. His Jackie Moon once had a hit soul single establishing the merits of sexy love (“I’m talkin’ rain-forest sweaty”) and has a personal style that would have been funny pre-“Anchorman,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Boogie Nights,” “Dazed and Confused,” 150 episodes of “That 70s Show,” etc.
The movie is rated R, but does nothing with the privilege except throw in dirty words as awkwardly as an Eastern European tourist reading them out of his phrasebook (“The Swedes are so interesting. They make an excellent
f – – – picture”). Many come from a bored announcer (Will Arnett) who keeps drinking whisky while he’s calling the game. His drinking didn’t make me laugh – it made me thirsty.
For one or two chaotic moments, the movie threatens to become wild instead of silly, such as when a gun enters a poker game. When Jackie Moon decides to start fighting other teams out of nihilist bravado, I almost smelled the coppery tang of the Hanson brothers’ hilarious bloodletting in “Slap Shot.”
That movie, though, wasn’t broad; everything in it could have really happened – especially the hockey fights – and the actors playing the Hansons were semi-pro players. This flick, on the other hand, has unrealistic game action (Andre Benjamin, playing a guy called “Coffee Black,” is the one good player) and keeps veering away from what could have been an OK story about underdogs.
Instead, it lobs in boob jokes, yuk-yuk dumb guys (Jackie Earle Haley, the “Bad News Bears” kid, plays a hippie who wins $10,000 on a lucky halftime shot, then runs off with the 5-foot novelty check trying to cash it) and ragged laugh lines. “I’m so happy, I can’t even feel my arms.” “Everyone can eat s – – -! A big bag of s – – -!” “How are your mom and sister? It’s been about 12 weeks since I porked ’em.”
What does the 12 weeks have to do with anything? Like most of the gags – a priest moonlighting as a ref, a guy who goes nuts when he’s called a “jive turkey,” Jackie’s edict that his players wear eyeliner, a rule that the team must buy corn dogs for fans if it scores 125 points – it’s just a setup. It doesn’t miss – it goes up and down and hopes you haven’t noticed it never let go of the ball.
SEMI-PRO
Shtickball.
Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (profanity, sexual situations). At the E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, others.