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It’s rimshots all the way in this unexceptional Will Ferrell basketball comedy which gives its star a garish ’70s backdrop of fish-bowl bubble-perms, sequin-trimmed kaftans and Average White Band in which to wave his broad comic shtick (running around in circles, flailing arms, screaming, etc).
He plays Jackie Moon, a hirsute, one-time funk sensation who injects the profits of his sole hit single ‘Love Me Sexy’ into buying rinky-dink local basketball team Flint Tropics, who he plays for, manages and promotes.
Like ‘Talladega Nights’ and ‘Anchorman’, ‘Semi-Pro’ resorts to the bombast of brash ‘infotainment’ news and sports programming to mine its humour. This, admittedly, yields a few glorious moments (Moon, for purely hyperbolic motives, dubs the final game of the Tropics’ season the ‘Mega Bowl’ and claims it to be the greatest event since ‘the invention of the submarine’) but also leaves you with the chilling thought that there isn’t a sport that couldn’t be stripped and stretched to fit this tired format.