Semi-Pro

As a sports-flick parody, Semi-Pro is predictably hit-and-miss—plenty of comic fizz, but a lot of it just a belch away from outright fizzle. And Will Ferrell’s Jackie Moon, an outlandish combination of ’70s pop star and player/coach/mogul in a now-defunct pro basketball league (the old NBA-challenging ABA), is central to the muddle as well as the mirth. Semi-Pro manages to percolate fairly steadily as goofy/smart entertainment even as the Jackie Moon story stumbles into just plain goofy. Moon/Ferrell’s farcical rise-and-fall shares significant screen-time with a somewhat dissonant comic-romantic subplot involving a veteran pro basketballer (Woody Harrelson) and his estranged lover (Maura Tierney), most of which proves less off-putting once it’s become more or less clear that Scot Armstrong’s (Old School, Starsky & Hutch, The Heartbreak Kid) grab-bag of a screenplay is mixing levels of humor, and styles of comedy, without much regard for any niceties of matching, let alone consistency of tone.