Semi-Pro

Will Ferrell specializes in cocky, clueless morons with a soft side. They are characters who aren't as sophisticated, smart, handsome or charming as they think they are. The jokes come from the huge gap between the way we perceive the characters and how they perceive themselves. It's a classic comic premise. Steve Martin used it, Eugene Levy's Bobby Bittman used it. My retard cousin Larry could make me wet myself with laughter every time he wears an ascot and asks if his beef wellington is ready.

Sadly, I stopped having the urge to piss my pants after about the tenth time Larry did his Charles Nelson Reilly, and he's still doing it. He's retarded, for real. He's not a Hollywood actor trying to win an award for acting stupid, neither is he someone looking for a handout. He's a full-grown man who likes Chef Boy-ar-Dee straight from the can, has never kissed anyone except a gerbil (which he accidentally ate during a makeout session) and lives in a group home with an abusive woman and a cat that has tried to suffocate him twice.

My point is that as retarded as Larry is, I have stopped laughing at him, even out of charity (sympathy, I just learned, is not tax deductible). I'm starting to feel the same way about Will Ferrell. How many fucking times is he going to play the same fucking character and expect us to fucking laugh? In Semi-Pro, he plays Jackie Moon, who is a 70s version of the early 80s Ron Burgundy from Anchorman. That is, a soft-bellied, oversexed doofus. The jokes are exactly the same: funny clothes, exaggerated swinger style, semi-nudity, bad music and the slow dimming realization that he is incompetent. Oh, but he's lovable. At least Jackie Moon, who is the same as Ron Burgundy, is different from Frank the Tank from Old School, because that guy was in the present, even if he was a sweet moron who took off his clothes. Blades of Glory? Same shit, different ticket to get in.

Seriously, Ferrell is just treading water in the two-foot kiddie pool with Semi-Pro. It stinks like a sock stuffed with shit that's been sitting under the mattress for a few weeks. I think all of us who have ever been too drunk to get out of bed when nature calls know exactly what the smells like. Will Ferrell has gone from being a clever comedian who had a hand in shaping his roles, to a fat, lazy Hollywood actor who hires out to the shittiest, highest-paying turdpile available. He went from a guy who wanted to make good movies, to a guy who wanted to make money. Rather than look at a script and say, "This can be funny. What if we did this, or this?", he now maybe reads a script and then says "Yeah, I can do that. Hell, I've already done it five times."

I fucking hate that. I hate when smart and funny people stop trying and start listening to the advice of unfunny, money-grubbing assholes like agents and grassfuckers. At least my retard cousin Larry does the same thing over and over by his own choice, and not for profit.

There is always the excuse, "I'm just giving the people what they want." Maybe that's what Ferrell uses to sleep at night. I say, fuck the people. Deep down, a funny person knows if something is quality and it has nothing to do with what others laugh at. A good comic should make people laugh and still hate himself for being so weak. Only bad comics with no interest in being truly funny or innovaitve justify themselves by claiming to be giving the people what they want. After all, if that was the only thing that mattered, we'd have forty cable channels showing people getting hit in the nuts with softballs. As it is, I think we only have about ten.

The plot of Semi-Pro is pretty irrelevant. Some bullshit about Ferrell owning a struggling basketball team that may merge with the NBA if they stop sucking so much. So, they do. The team is populated by the most indistinguishable nobodies since "wet t-shirt" night at the Tavern. Andre (3000) Benjamin continues to be the worst actor you hear way too much about. Leave it to the grassfuckers to think that they can hip up a pile of turd by putting a rock star in it. It's because they are too fucking clueless to know that just hanging around with cool people doesn't make them cool, too. Maura Tierney and Woody Harrelson have a romantic subplot that's as dead as Elizabeth Taylor. It's there, but desiccated, bloated, limp, ancient and horrifying to watch. Will Arnett, Rob Corddry, Matt Walsh and Andy Richter also appear in the movie without having a single funny thing to do. Maybe they were supposed to do something funny, but the sorry-ass direction botched it like a Tijuana dental procedure.

Ultimately, of course, Ferrell and the other players learn a valuable lesson about themselves, win the big game and everyone gets what they wanted . I have no fucking clue why someone would make what's supposed to be a parody of a sports movie and then be so God damn lazy as to resort to every tired-ass sports movie cliché imaginable. Actually, I can. It happens when people think they want to make a parody, but they're too fucking stupid to do it right.

Semi-Pro is rated R. Don't think this movie has nudity in it. It has none. It just liberally sprinkles the word "fuck" about. Not that there is anything wrong with that fine word, but as long as you're getting an R, why not be raunchy? Why the fuck make a PG-13 movie and then add a lot of fucks to bump it up to R? Maybe it's a marketing tactic. It sure as hell ain't a case of artistic freedom, because this ain't art.

Semi-Pro is an all-pro pile of crap. Don't see it in a theater, don't wait for it on cable. Maybe some day you can watch it over a shoulder on someone else's iPod. Mr. Ferrell, get your head out of your ass, try working with some new people, and start having some standards again. One finger.