Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 18, 2011

No more can filmmakers get instant laughs with Pong, ascots, eight-tracks and lava lamps. It's just no longer funny. And for 95 percent of its running time, neither is Semi-Pro.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 1, 2008

The semifunny Semi-Pro is amiable enough, but you never feel there's much at stake.

| Mar 31, 2008

Semi-Pro isn't painful, but it's a very minor credit for everyone involved.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 7, 2008

Judging from this low-scoring sports comedy about the mystique of men with balls, Will Ferrell needs to call a time-out from belly baring to refocus his fan-favorite game of playing clueless male doofuses.

| Original Score: C- | Mar 6, 2008

You take the Will Ferrell formula and you plug it in, but somehow it just feels kind of uninspired and flat.

Full Review | Mar 3, 2008

There are some ludicrous sight gags and uniquely silly, if foul-mouthed, laughs. The movie falters when it tries to be serious. Fortunately, those moments are few.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 29, 2008

You can't help but marvel, and laugh at, Ferrell's indefatigable enthusiasm and willingness to make a complete ass of himself.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 29, 2008

I laughed from start to finish at its relentlessly, energetically profane absurdity and a cast crammed with funny actors in even the smallest roles.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 29, 2008

Ferrell is capable of a great deal more than he's been delivering. It might surprise him to learn that white men can jump. But first they have to try.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 29, 2008

The real problem lies in the character Ferrell is playing. Aside from the unimportant detail that there really were no former disco stars in 1976, the character is vague -- and specificity of character is what makes Ferrell funny.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 29, 2008

There isn't enough going on in Semi-Pro, comically or otherwise, to sustain the movie even through its first half-hour. This may be one of the most sluggish sports comedies ever made -- even the supposedly rousing final sequence feels belabored.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2008

Semi-Pro goes up for the dunk and misses the hoop, the backboard and the point. Instead, it manages to both strike out and get sacked. Whose idea was it to remake Slap Shot a la Jerry Lewis?

| Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 29, 2008

For die-hard Ferrell fans, this could be the ultimate test. He has been playing variations of Elf for five years, and his antics have grown as stale as Jackie's socks.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 29, 2008

Like many of Will Ferrell's recent films, "Semi-Pro" finds the sweet spot between sports melodrama and parody, and hammers it for 90 diverting minutes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 29, 2008

An orgy of disco-era excess, it's also an interminable exercise in beating a dead horse.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 29, 2008

It's long on shorts but short on punchlines.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 29, 2008

Ferrell is to the sports comedy what the Toronto Maple Leafs are to the hockey biz: Hard-core fans are sure to show up and find reasons to be amused. The rest of us can only hope for better days.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 29, 2008

Semi-Pro is precisely that: a movie that is sort of professionally made and sort of professionally acted with no serious expectations beyond earning money and offering audience members some passing entertainment.

| Original Score: C+ | Feb 29, 2008

Technically, it's not a foul to shoot a stupid sports comedy. In fact, it's becoming something of a routine maneuver for Will Ferrell.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 29, 2008