Matt Brodsky

It's now Friday on the east coast, and it marks just one week away from the release of Will Ferrell's latest movie. In case your head has been in the sand or you do not own a television, Semi-Pro is about a fictional ABA team that is in danger of folding if the season is not salvaged via the team record and possibly attendance. Ferrell is Jackie Moon and is the owner, GM, and team captain of the Tropics.
For a direct link to the full movie trailer, head here.

Since I could follow basketball, I've watched the NBA, and growing up I watched my share of documentaries about its now-defunct competitor, the American Basketball Association. In addition to being a Will Ferrell fan, the subject he is taking head on with this film makes me want to see this film. That being said, I don't worship every movie that Will Ferrell makes. In fact, when it comes to sports-related films starring Ferrell, I think they have been far from impressive:

Kicking and Screaming
Ferrell was nominated for a Razzie Award, and I couldn't have agreed more with that evaluation after seeing this movie. Mike Ditka actually showed he had a little bit of acting ability, but other than that, we've seen this before; a power-hungry father that lives through his child's competitions. This is also somewhat of a children's movie like Elf. Ferrell tried so much to save this screenplay, but it just wasn't working.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Maybe it's because I wasn't brought up on NASCAR, or maybe it's because co-star John C. Reilly (Cal Naughton Jr.) is probably one of the most unfunny individuals to continue to get work, but I didn't feel this one either. NASCAR has funny aspects to it like every sport, and the film played to those stereotypes of the fans, teams, and drivers. Exploiting stereotypes is funny for the first five minutes, but it definitely did not carry for the entire movie. As a Will Ferrell fan, I feel like I am in the minority on this.

Blades of Glory
"Will Ferrell" and "Ice Skating" sound ridiculous in the same sentence, and that proved true on the silver screen. One mistake they made was using one of the funnier moments (the fighting that ended up lighting the olympics mascot on fire) in previews. The scenes were way overextended, like when he and Jon Heder were skating together. You laugh, but the humor fades quickly. The ice skating fans are few and far between, and the cameos in the film probably didn't register with a lot of viewers. His co-star is another disaster of an actor, known for being Napoleon Dynamite. That film had to be one of the worst I have ever seen, but that's another story for another time. Blades of Glory and Talledega Nights basically had no chance to impress me due to the presence of Heder and John C. Reilly.

So that is a run-through of the Will Ferrell sports-related movie collection. I may come away as a Ferrell hater, but that is not the case. Old School and Anchorman are two of my favorite movies. His minor roles in Wedding Crashers and Zoolander are typecast to him perfectly. Let's not forget Elf; while it is a family movie, it lived up to the "feel-good" we all get from movies like these.

Back onto the subject of Semi-Pro, the marketing team deserves a lot of credit for teaming up with Old Spice in television ads. I found some of these spots funny, and they can also be seen on Old Spice's official website. When was the last time you saw a fictional "star athlete" be a spokesman for a real product? If the precedent hasn't already been set, I would not be surprised to see more marketing like this.

So should I see this movie? Or will I come away disappointed?