Will Ferrell scores again, but misses just as often, with this semi-good basketball comedy set in the era of disco, giant afros, and Shasta cola. He plays a one-hit-wonder soul man who becomes the 0wner-coach-player of the Florida Tropics, a fictional team in the old American Basketball Association. As presented here, the Tropics are a low-rent team in a low-rent league, one that after the 1976 season merged with the NBA, but leaving some teams behind.
The story here has the Tropics having to compete to be one of the four teams that will be incorporated into the NBA, setting up the traditional underdog sports story. The team’s savior, a washed-up NBA refugee, is played by Woody Harrelson, who’s the most appealing actor in the movie. Ferrell plays the now-familiar man-child that overpopulates his filmography, and quite probably Hollywood comedies generally. If you liked him in Talledega Nights and Blades of Glory, you’ll like him as a kinder version of those characters. It’s less well written than Talledega, though, and even though it’s not as silly as Blades of Glory, the goofy parts here fall flat.
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