Another spring, another Will Ferrell sports comedy. I admit to being surprised after checking with imdb.com to see that there have only been three of these (or four if you count Kicking and Screaming along with Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory): It sure seems like a lot more. Maybe it’s that Ferrell’s comic persona has become so rigid, the boob who thinks he’s smart just because he’s successful. It’s what made his George Bush the highlight of his stint on Saturday Night Live, and Anchorman his best movie. In Semi-Pro, he’s Jackie Moon, owner/manager/player of a Flint American Basketball Association franchise. Moon bought the team with the profits from a one-shot hit single, and has tried to keep it alive through promotion more than athletic skills. But there are more people on the court than in the stands at their games, and when the ABA decides to merge with the NBA, the Flint Tropics are scheduled for dissolution.

Because sports movies invariably feature an underdog team pulling together to win the Big Game, the script concocts a Big Game for Moon and his squad to aim for, with the help of a newly recruited player who actually knows something about the game (played by Woody Harrelson in a wig that makes him look like Anton Chigurh, though with fewer laughs). Hoop clichés aside, Semi-Pro depends more on 1970s stereotypes for easy laughs: shaggy hairstyles, discos, sports reporters in plaid suits and patterned ties, etc. There’s also an overload of clumsy profanity (the sole source of the movie’s R rating) that makes the film the equivalent of an evening with a group of 13-year-old boys on their first drunk.

Some reviewers are calling Semi-Pro a rip-off of Slap Shot, but that’s giving it too much credit—at least that classic Paul Newman comedy had a real sense of economic despair motivating its third-rate skaters. Ferrell’s most popular films—Anchorman, Talladega Nights—were written and/or directed by fellow SNL veteran Adam McKay. This, on the other hand, was written by Scot Armstrong, whose credits include School for Scoundrels and the remakes of The Heartbreak Kid and Starsky & Hutch, and directed by Kent Alterman, a first-timer with production experience on Mr. Woodcock, Balls of Fury and Son of the Mask. Don’t say you weren’t warned.