Very little of the magic of TALLADEGA NIGHTS is evident here.

Rating: 5/10 (15 June 2008)

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!