Semi-Pro: Let�s Get Sweat Edition
Alliance DVD
*** 1/2 (out of five)
The �70s is a gift that keeps on giving for Will Ferrell, a comic Narnia to which the comedian seems destined to keep returning to for inspiration. With Semi-Pro, Ferrell and director Kent Alterman baste the underdog sports picture in thick coating of the �70s, a not altogether pleasurable marinade that refers liberally to ugly clothes, creepy sex, nasty drugs and the last guiltless public embrace of drinking and smoking.
Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, an indifferently talented musician who, in true �70s style, made a fortune off a one hit wonder, and used the earnings to make himself an owner, coach and player of an American Basketball Association franchise team based out of his hometown of Flint, Michigan, a luckless, last-place outfit better known for its flamboyant promotions than scoring.
He thinks his dreams have come true when the league merges with the NBA, but the catch is that only the top four teams will make it, so he trades the team�s washing machine for the only player willing to come to Flint and try to give the team a shot at coveted fourth place, a washed up bench jockey played by Woody Harrelson.
The film is typical Ferrell, at its best during a couple of ensemble set pieces and when the star gives full reign to his love of humiliation, but it�s motivated by an obvious love for the flashy, dopey antics of the ABA, with its red, white and blue ball and high-scoring play. In a bonus feature devoted to the long-gone league, we learn how much the modern NBA owes to its dirty little brother, and how much of the ABA�s shameless style was absorbed into the basketball mainstream, from half-time court shows to slam-dunking.
Meet The Spartans
20th Century Fox DVD
** (out of five)
For those of us who loved Mad magazine in its �70s heyday, it�s nice to see that its classic movie parodies are being immortalized with movies like Meet The Spartans. Even if you loved 300, the frame-by-frame recreation of Frank Miller�s comic book, it�s hard not to laugh at the wildly obvious gags trotted out here, from the glaring homoeroticism to the eye-popping acting style employed by everyone from Gerard Butler on down.
Unfortunately, there are too many groan-inducing gags, like the inevitable and threadbare shot at Paris Hilton, and a long scene involving the bottomless pit of death is only intermittently cathartic pop culture purging. The virtue of Mad�s movie parodies, however, is that they were short; even with several re-readings to savour the better gags, they could be consumed during the course of the average weekend drive to your grandparents� house, and never wore out their welcome as relentlessly as a film like Meet The Spartans.
Rescue Me
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment DVD
*** 1/2 (out of five)
The second season of Rescue Me was roundly considered a disappointment by critics and fans mostly because it was more comic and less brutal than the previous three, whose appeal � for its largely male fans � was the way each season relentlessly put the screws to Denis Leary�s Tommy Gavin, easing off only as much as was necessary with subplots involving the rest of Gavin�s New York firehouse crew.
Season four reversed the trend, making comic sport of Tommy�s life while ramping up the tragedy in the crew�s, most notably Chief Reilly, whose midseason exit is still regarded with dismay, both among fans and the show�s cast. The major exception to the influx of tragedy is John Scurti�s Lou, whose affair with a nymphomaniac ex-nun still feels like the punchline to a bad joke every time it pops up. After staying off the juice for the whole of the season, it ends with a death that will probably signal Tommy�s fall off the wagon for season five, a likelihood that gets offhandedly confirmed by producer Peter Tolan in one of the bonus features.
Vince Vaughn�s Wild West Comedy Show
Alliance DVD
**** (out of five)
Much of this record of a 30-day cross country comedy tour hangs on the lightly acerbic affability of host and organizer Vince Vaughn. It takes a while for the personalities of the four struggling young stand-up comics featured in the film to emerge amidst all of the business of the bus travel, the grueling schedule, and the comic improve routines Vaughn cooks up to fill out the show � bits featuring producer Peter Billingsley, Vaughn pal Jon Favreau, country singer Dwight Yoakam and Justin �the Apple guy� Long.
It�s no surprise that comedians are often anything but funny offstage, and this film proves the truism amply. Insecure, depressed and often scared, the quartet of comedians reveal a whole world of stress and pain that fuels the gags, from Sebastian Maniscalco�s anxiety about his ability to make a living from the business, to John Caparulo�s barely-concealed hostility to the world, to the poverty and death in Bret Ernst�s family background. By comparison, Ahmed Ahmed�s material � the indignities of being Muslim in America post-9/11 � seem rather underpowered.
City Slickers
MGM DVD
*** 1/2 (out of five)
For a comedy, City Slickers begins from a very unhappy place, specifically the emotional doldrums of the male midlife crisis, which is played for far fewer laughs than the film�s premise would suggest. It�s amazing to think that Crystal made the film just two years after When Harry Met Sally, the film that turned him briefly into an unconventional but successful leading man. It�s hard not to look at City Slickers as that film�s true sequel � a picture of what Harry would be like after a few years� marriage to Sally, struck with the realization that life�s big adventures were truly behind him.
This grim but very real tone sustains itself all the way through the picture, which has its sentimental moments, though it has to be remembered that this is the film where, a moment after what�s probably the pivotal experience in Crystal�s character�s turning the corner on his emotional malaise � his assistance in the birth of a calf � Jack Palance�s Curly shoots the baby�s mother when the delivery goes bad. Neither funny ha-ha nor funny sad, it makes you wonder what the Rolling Stone reviewer was thinking when he called it a �rowdy western jokefest.�
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