Keep Your Working Class Aspirations Where We Can Mock Them

Rating: 1/10 (3 March 2008)

Unless you think stereotyping working class cities and people is funny, you won't like Semi- Pro. Will Ferrell, ABA basketball, the 70s, humor, all take a back seat to the real story line and exhausting punch-line: people from blue-collar backgrounds with ambitions and aspirations beyond the world they are suppose to know are foolish idiots for thinking their hopes and dreams are tenable.
It's so bad, you can't help wondering how and why this movie got green-lighted. It's almost as if Hollywood studio execs got together after Michael Moore's famous Oscar acceptance speech to draw straws to determine which studio would sacrifice its reputation in order to undermine and discredit Moore's upbringing and world-view once and for all. Then it was simply a matter of employing the most sinister and subversive weapon in their arsenal: frat- boy comedy aimed at 18- to 35-year old suburban white males.
It's not like we're ever going to see an action-packed historical epic about the Flint Sit-Down Strikes coming out of Hollywood. No no. Can't have working class pride getting in the way of the upper crust's efforts to justify their false superiority and the manner in which they treat the people who actually do the work that generates the wealth that butters their bread.
For all intents and purposes, everyone who worked on Semi-Pro is a Semi-Scab.