Movie Review - Semi-Pro

Take Kingpin, The Mighty Ducks, Dodgeball then add Will Ferrall & Basketball. Doesn't sound like much of a recipe for success? That's because it isn't. This is a movie all about celebrating failure. Not success, failure. This team don't win the league. They don't get promoted into the NBA.

The only reason they even win a trophy is they created it in the 1st place. The language is beyond course. The sexual references equally so. This really should be a 15 rating. NOT an R!.

Ferrall as usual isn't funny, it's the minor characters that make this movie. The film drops you into the teams problems pretty deep right from the start of the movie (which is a very bad idea as it'd be a better movie for knowing how they got that bad in the 1st place).

This only really gets going once the idea of becoming an NBA team is mooted more than a third of the way into the movie. If I wanted to see a movie about someone who bought his way into a sporting team I'd go watch Brewster's Millions as it's a much funnier movie, has a much better cast & script and also has much better sport in it.

Ferrall is just about bearable as Jackie Moon, Woody Harrelson as Monix is the much better character & better actor. Even Andre Benjamin manages to make Ferrall look bad here. Just being set in the 70's and using a lot of 70's hair, fashion & cultural references doesn't make for a good idea.

The whole idea of Ferrall's slutty wife never goes anywhere, likewise the story of Monix getting back with his ex. Even the plot of the team not getting promoted despite winning 4th place even manages to never go anywhere as the movie actually has no ending at all. It seems they just ran out of ideas and decided to end the movie on the fans trashing the whole town.

There are some funny scenes and some very funny lines but that doesn't make for a good or funny movie. I thought they were going to use the hippy who made the freethrow but that never went anywhere (the tiny scene during the end credits attempted to resolve that plot but still didn't).

Also the idea that Coffee can be on the bench for the opposing team then go back to playing for his old team during the game? Never going to happen as he'd be unable to play due to not being selected for his team pre-game.

The film attempts some lame humour with things like jumping the cheerleaders on skates (letting you know the movie has jumped the shark by this point using this reference) and fighting a bear (neither scene really ended up ever going anywhere even if the bear did keep popping up afterwards) which was never a good idea and not ended well either (if at all).

The film just doesn't have enough cohesive ideas to be any good. If it had gone with a better ending (the team taking its case for promotion to court and winning) then it might have achieved the "feel good" factor it was looking for. As it was, it fell far short of the mark.

At least in all the films I named at the start the underdogs did eventually win their championships or titles. This team only managed 4th place. Never anything to shout about or celebrate.

I wouldn't recommend watching this unless your drunk or high.