Semi-Pro Critic Reviews

Very much in the tradition of "Slap Shot," George Roy Hill's raucously funny and foul-mouthed 1977 laffer about the misadventures of a minor-league hockey team, Semi-Pro scores big laughs with the rowdy play-by-play of hard-luck hoopsters struggling for professional survival.Read the full review

Semi-Pro finds the sweet spot between sports melodrama and parody, and hammers it for 90 diverting minutes.Read the full review

The problem with Semi-Pro is that it keeps forgetting it's a parody of sports movies; the final scenes are supposed to be uplifting (sort of) but they're not fooling anyone. The film's much better when it just lets the guys gas and sass each other.Read the full review

Definitely more than semi-funny.Read the full review

Critics will score Semi-Pro on its missed shots. My guess is that audiences will do what they always do with Ferrell: remember when he killed them laughing.Read the full review

Harrelson and Maura Tierney, who plays Monix's love interest, seem to be inhabiting a different, more interesting, movie, one that follows the familiar path of a has-been athlete seeking redemption at what looks like his last stop. The strange thing is that the subplot is so tangential to the rest of the movie that the scenes could be omitted with no one the wiser.Read the full review

The comedy is sloppy, crude and contains far too many misfires, but the film does capture the old ABA spirit in its ungainly struggles to wrestle laughs from seriously mediocre material.Read the full review

Deserves credit for attempting something more emotional and dramatic than the typical Ferrell gagfest, but Harrelson and Benjamin's earnest subplots cost the film comic momentum and big laughs without adding much in return.Read the full review

The laughs do come, but not as readily, not as heartily and not as joyfully as you might expect.Read the full review