Read the old ABA web page and find out how much of the movie is true. Semi pro has many influences from the ABA. The slam dunk style, bear wrestling, and cow milking contests were some of the funny material which made a great movie. Real life is funnier than fiction. Semi pro has great material too work with. A goofy movie with a no better goofy actor than Will Ferrell. Ferrell pulls off a hard acting job of a fly by the seat of his pants owner/coach/manager and player etc ABA operator. The acting and directing is great but the true star which shines is the script, which is influenced by real life. Low ball humor, not for the whole family. 8 out of 10. My buddy Dax and his wife enjoyed the movie. What does the Tropics have to do with Flint, Michigan? I think the team moved from Florida. Funny the Nuggets almost went to the final in their first year with the NBA. I guess that is why the NHL stripped the WHA Jets of their team before they merged. Just an after thought.

In SEMI-PRO, Will Farrell is the owner-manager-player for the fictional ABA franchise Flint Tropics. For those of you too young to remember the ABA (American Basketball Association),it was a rival league to the NBA that really suffered due to lack of fan support as well as having teams in amazingly small markets in many cases. Unfortunately, even for an ABA team, attendance is lousy and the players are mostly untalented losers. However, when it's announced that the league is folding and four of its premier teams are moving to the NBA, Farrell is excited when it's agreed that the four teams that have the best record will become NBA franchises. This motivates him and his hapless players into finally playing like a team and it's rather predictable that they manage to pull it all together leading up to the final "big game".

In many ways, the script is quite formulaic and you know what's going to happen, but there are a few cute moments that keep it interesting. SEMI-PRO is in some ways like TALLADEGA NIGHTS and SLAPSHOT rolled into one with one major exception--it doesn't come close to either of these movies in quality or especially laughs. This really surprised me, as I was expecting a sense of humor like TALLADEGA NIGHTS, but sadly there were only a few small moments like this--scenes Will Ferrell was doing promotions for his basketball team. The best of these insane promotions was probably the bear wrestling scene. I think the biggest problem was that in TALLADEGA NIGHTS, the races weren't really that important--the humor was. In SEMI-PRO, the film seemed to bog down when they actually were playing basketball--especially since, within the rules, you can't do anything THAT crazy. I really think the film would have been better served with either less basketball or by simply throwing reality out the window during these ballgame scenes. Plus, while it sure looked like SLAPSHOT at times because of some of the fighting and a team's efforts to avoid folding, it never really went far enough regarding social commentary or the likable humor of SLAPSHOT.

In addition to not quite succeeding like these other two films, SEMI-PRO was extremely vulgar--and often not in a funny way. Too many testicle jokes, crude language and vomiting references--and these were supposed to be the funny moments in the film. Sadly, the crude humor didn't work and really make this a film that is NOT child-friendly.

If you are a Will Farrell fan, there's enough to this film that you'll like, so give it a shot. If you are not a Farrell fan, then this film will do nothing to convince you otherwise. My advice is see TALLADEGA NIGHTS and STRANGER THAN FICTION--two exceptional films that show Farrell has some depth and can make a real crowd-pleasing film. SEMI-PRO is a bit of a dud.

FYI--Check out the trivia section on IMDb about this film. Apparently, only a short time after this film the bear used in the fighting scene actually killed someone!

Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell) is a singer who had one hit with a crude disco song that made enough money for him to purchase a Basketball team in Michigan. Moon is the coach, player, owner, announcer in this struggling team in the ABA. He is reducing to pulling stunts to attract the crowds and his only hope that a merger of the ABA with the NBA will save him.

The film has a nice 1970s setting and the merger of the ABA and NBA is based on fact. However the film flops as a comedy as the laughs are few and far between. In fact I only found the bear wrestling scene with Kristen Wiig raised a laugh with me. Even the announcer scenes were largely predictable.

Like other Ferrell comedies the premise of the movie is absurd, the characters in the film are not well drawn and its main failing is that there was no comedy in the script.