People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
DVD Review: The Promotion
THE MOVIE
I had no idea what to expect going in to The Promotion, which is really how I wish I could go into just about every movie I see, as I find it makes the viewing experience purer somehow. (Alas, in this age of the Internet and thanks to my own addiction to movie-news websites, th
is almost never happens anymore.) I’d seen the trailer, but aside from the basic premise, I knew nothing. And by the time the credits rolled, I’d been pleasantly surprised by this endearing workplace comedy.
The Promotion is about Doug Stauber (Seann William Scott), the assistant manager at a suburban Chicago outlet of a fictional chain of grocery stores called Donaldson’s. He’s growing increasingly dissatisfied with his lot in life, and when he learns of a new location being built nearby, he puts his name in as a candidate for manager of the new store, thinking the new authority will net him some newfound self-respect. His boss tells him he’s a “shoo-in” for the new position, until Richard Welhner, (John C. Reilly), an assistant manager from a store in Quebec, transfers to Chicago with an eye on the new manager’s job himself. In the meantime, Richard is placed in Doug’s store, where the two men begin a workplace rivalry that eventually escalates into all-out war as they each try to screw the other one over for the job.
If for nothing other than the fact that writer-director Steven Conrad mines the workplace for comedy, The Promotion is vaguely reminiscent of Mike Judge’s cult classic Office Space, not to mention TV’s The Office (The Promotion also co-stars The Office’s Jenna Fischer as Doug’s patient wife), but it’s really quite a different movie. Office Space had a dark heart of very real anger at its core (as does Judge’s follow-up, the little-seen Idiocracy, one of the angriest comedies I’ve ever seen), however silly the proceedings were on the surface. But while The Promotion does take many swipes at the ridiculousness of corporate life, even at the retail level, Conrad’s overall take on humanity is much, much brighter than Judge’s. Conrad, who penned the screenplay for the feel-good Will Smith hit The Pursuit of Happyness, treats the main characters with affection, even at their most ridiculous, and it gives The Promotion a warmth that Office Space lacks. (I, however, am a mean-spirited, curmudgeonly bastard, so I still prefer Office Space.)
All that said, The Promotion still made me laugh quite a bit. As much as John C. Reilly is a truly great actor, he’s also proven himself in the last several years to be a talented comic actor as well, and his Richard Welhner is simultaneously totally ridiculous and also a very real guy who just wants to provide for his wife and child. He listens to self-help tapes (literally; he carries around an old-school cassette walkman) that feature classic rock meant to inspire him, such as ‘Fly Like An Eagle,’ and Conrad assembles some nice, clever little montages of him strolling confidently down the streets of Chicago with his silly headphones while Steve Miller croons. Reilly also does a strange “Canadian accent” that somehow manages to be funny and sound somewhat familiar to a Canadian like myself without actually being accurate; I’ve never heard a Canadian who talks like this, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t funny.
But the movie ultimately rests on the shoulders of Sean William Scott as Doug. He’s the straight man to Reilly’s wacky Canuck, which is typically the more thankless role. I actually really like Scott despite my hatred for the A
merican Pie franchise, where he made his name as the irritating frat-boy archetype Stifler (his chemistry with The Rock is great in The Rundown, one of the better action movies of the past decade). Here he’s the complete opposite, a soft-spoken, passive guy who’s quietly wondering where his life went so wrong. After all, few people dream of being an assistant manager at a grocery store in their early 30s. He still gets a lot of funny stuff to do, and his relationship with Fischer is both sweet and funny, particularly anything involving the couple’s neighbours, a gay, banjo-playing couple never seen but heard through their thin apartment walls. All Doug wants is to be able to provide for his family, a motivation just about anyone can relate to.
The notion that all both of these men wants is to be the breadwinner for their respective broods is what gives The Promotion its emotional core, and it’s also what keeps either character from devolving into a cartoonishly evil asshole. But it’s also the thing I took issue with the most; there’s something archaic about the notion that men should provide for their families, and while the movie makes it clear that both guys are a little backward in this regard – Doug’s wife genuinely loves him, regardless of where he works or how much he’s getting paid, a fact he can’t seem to grasp – the film still felt a little too quick to justify the characters’ bad behaviour because the ends justify the means. It’s a minor gripe, and I do give Conrad credit for crafting a satisfying ending (which I will not spoil) that resolves all the conflicts set up in the film.
As Conrad himself notes on the commentary, the film is basically about the nobility of people who toil away in thankless jobs we don’t particularly like, or sometimes even hate, for reasons larger than ourselves. And while a message like that coming from a guy who makes his scratch writing and directing movies in Hollywood runs the risk of coming across condescending, it’s not. As much as it was marketed as a zany comedy about psychological warfare at the workplace (and it is that, to an extent), The Promotion is really about the sacrifices we all make in our professional lives in order to find some kind of personal fulfillment. It’s a fun little comedy with heart that’s worth a rental.
GRADE: B
THE EXTRAS
The Promotion DVD has a decent collection of extras, lead by commentary by writer-director Steven Conrad and producers Jessika Borsiczky Goyer and Steven A. Jones. Goyer and Jones mostly discuss nuts-and-bolts details of shooting on location in Chicago, from issues involving finding an empty grocery store to shoot in to dealing with a set reeking of spoiling meat, while Conrad primarily discusses the movie itself and the characters. For a guy who wrote and directed a pretty funny comedy, Conrad is very soft-spoken and sober, and it’s clear he took the material more seriously than one would expect. He talks about treating the characters with respect (rightly gushing over his lead actors in the process) and trying t
o ride that line between making a funny movie without reducing anyone – particularly Reilly’s character – into a buffoonish caricature. He also discusses the film’s small scale, swapping stories with the producers about various corners being cut, almost none of which come across in the movie, so good on them for that. And his story about Dimension Films boss Bob Weinstein agreeing to fork over the cash needed to get the rights to the classic rock tunes featured in the film on the condition that Conrad do some script work on another, unnamed Dimension film gave me some insight into how Hollywood works (up until then I just assumed everyone just slept with everyone else for work; I guess it’s true that you learn something new every day). It’s a solid, if unspectacular, commentary track.
The other main extra is a featurette on the making of the film. It’s pretty standard making-of stuff, with clips of the cast and crew talking about how great everyone else is to work with. I happen to find these sorts of things interesting when the film itself is interesting, and I liked The Promotion well enough that it held my attention for its brief running time.
Also included are a handful of deleted scenes, and as is typically the case, some are interesting, some aren’t. The “outtakes” listed on the back of the DVD are really just an extended outtake of a single scene that apparently Seann William Scott and his co-stars just couldn’t get through without laughing. I guess you had to be there.
There are also some “webisodes” created to promote the film online, also pretty hit-and-miss, though the one in which Conrad recorded a phone call from Scott in which the actor, evidently jealous that Reilly will be doing his “Canadian accent,” pitches him on doing an accent of his own. It’s pretty funny stuff, if only because I was never really clear if Scott was joking or not (Conrad alludes to him being a bit eccentric in his commentary). Overall The Promotion is a solid comedy tailor-made to find its audience on DVD.
I had no idea what to expect going in to The Promotion, which is really how I wish I could go into just about every movie I see, as I find it makes the viewing experience purer somehow. (Alas, in this age of the Internet and thanks to my own addiction to movie-news websites, th
is almost never happens anymore.) I’d seen the trailer, but aside from the basic premise, I knew nothing. And by the time the credits rolled, I’d been pleasantly surprised by this endearing workplace comedy.The Promotion is about Doug Stauber (Seann William Scott), the assistant manager at a suburban Chicago outlet of a fictional chain of grocery stores called Donaldson’s. He’s growing increasingly dissatisfied with his lot in life, and when he learns of a new location being built nearby, he puts his name in as a candidate for manager of the new store, thinking the new authority will net him some newfound self-respect. His boss tells him he’s a “shoo-in” for the new position, until Richard Welhner, (John C. Reilly), an assistant manager from a store in Quebec, transfers to Chicago with an eye on the new manager’s job himself. In the meantime, Richard is placed in Doug’s store, where the two men begin a workplace rivalry that eventually escalates into all-out war as they each try to screw the other one over for the job.
If for nothing other than the fact that writer-director Steven Conrad mines the workplace for comedy, The Promotion is vaguely reminiscent of Mike Judge’s cult classic Office Space, not to mention TV’s The Office (The Promotion also co-stars The Office’s Jenna Fischer as Doug’s patient wife), but it’s really quite a different movie. Office Space had a dark heart of very real anger at its core (as does Judge’s follow-up, the little-seen Idiocracy, one of the angriest comedies I’ve ever seen), however silly the proceedings were on the surface. But while The Promotion does take many swipes at the ridiculousness of corporate life, even at the retail level, Conrad’s overall take on humanity is much, much brighter than Judge’s. Conrad, who penned the screenplay for the feel-good Will Smith hit The Pursuit of Happyness, treats the main characters with affection, even at their most ridiculous, and it gives The Promotion a warmth that Office Space lacks. (I, however, am a mean-spirited, curmudgeonly bastard, so I still prefer Office Space.)
All that said, The Promotion still made me laugh quite a bit. As much as John C. Reilly is a truly great actor, he’s also proven himself in the last several years to be a talented comic actor as well, and his Richard Welhner is simultaneously totally ridiculous and also a very real guy who just wants to provide for his wife and child. He listens to self-help tapes (literally; he carries around an old-school cassette walkman) that feature classic rock meant to inspire him, such as ‘Fly Like An Eagle,’ and Conrad assembles some nice, clever little montages of him strolling confidently down the streets of Chicago with his silly headphones while Steve Miller croons. Reilly also does a strange “Canadian accent” that somehow manages to be funny and sound somewhat familiar to a Canadian like myself without actually being accurate; I’ve never heard a Canadian who talks like this, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t funny.
But the movie ultimately rests on the shoulders of Sean William Scott as Doug. He’s the straight man to Reilly’s wacky Canuck, which is typically the more thankless role. I actually really like Scott despite my hatred for the A
merican Pie franchise, where he made his name as the irritating frat-boy archetype Stifler (his chemistry with The Rock is great in The Rundown, one of the better action movies of the past decade). Here he’s the complete opposite, a soft-spoken, passive guy who’s quietly wondering where his life went so wrong. After all, few people dream of being an assistant manager at a grocery store in their early 30s. He still gets a lot of funny stuff to do, and his relationship with Fischer is both sweet and funny, particularly anything involving the couple’s neighbours, a gay, banjo-playing couple never seen but heard through their thin apartment walls. All Doug wants is to be able to provide for his family, a motivation just about anyone can relate to.The notion that all both of these men wants is to be the breadwinner for their respective broods is what gives The Promotion its emotional core, and it’s also what keeps either character from devolving into a cartoonishly evil asshole. But it’s also the thing I took issue with the most; there’s something archaic about the notion that men should provide for their families, and while the movie makes it clear that both guys are a little backward in this regard – Doug’s wife genuinely loves him, regardless of where he works or how much he’s getting paid, a fact he can’t seem to grasp – the film still felt a little too quick to justify the characters’ bad behaviour because the ends justify the means. It’s a minor gripe, and I do give Conrad credit for crafting a satisfying ending (which I will not spoil) that resolves all the conflicts set up in the film.
As Conrad himself notes on the commentary, the film is basically about the nobility of people who toil away in thankless jobs we don’t particularly like, or sometimes even hate, for reasons larger than ourselves. And while a message like that coming from a guy who makes his scratch writing and directing movies in Hollywood runs the risk of coming across condescending, it’s not. As much as it was marketed as a zany comedy about psychological warfare at the workplace (and it is that, to an extent), The Promotion is really about the sacrifices we all make in our professional lives in order to find some kind of personal fulfillment. It’s a fun little comedy with heart that’s worth a rental.
GRADE: B
THE EXTRAS
The Promotion DVD has a decent collection of extras, lead by commentary by writer-director Steven Conrad and producers Jessika Borsiczky Goyer and Steven A. Jones. Goyer and Jones mostly discuss nuts-and-bolts details of shooting on location in Chicago, from issues involving finding an empty grocery store to shoot in to dealing with a set reeking of spoiling meat, while Conrad primarily discusses the movie itself and the characters. For a guy who wrote and directed a pretty funny comedy, Conrad is very soft-spoken and sober, and it’s clear he took the material more seriously than one would expect. He talks about treating the characters with respect (rightly gushing over his lead actors in the process) and trying t
o ride that line between making a funny movie without reducing anyone – particularly Reilly’s character – into a buffoonish caricature. He also discusses the film’s small scale, swapping stories with the producers about various corners being cut, almost none of which come across in the movie, so good on them for that. And his story about Dimension Films boss Bob Weinstein agreeing to fork over the cash needed to get the rights to the classic rock tunes featured in the film on the condition that Conrad do some script work on another, unnamed Dimension film gave me some insight into how Hollywood works (up until then I just assumed everyone just slept with everyone else for work; I guess it’s true that you learn something new every day). It’s a solid, if unspectacular, commentary track.The other main extra is a featurette on the making of the film. It’s pretty standard making-of stuff, with clips of the cast and crew talking about how great everyone else is to work with. I happen to find these sorts of things interesting when the film itself is interesting, and I liked The Promotion well enough that it held my attention for its brief running time.
Also included are a handful of deleted scenes, and as is typically the case, some are interesting, some aren’t. The “outtakes” listed on the back of the DVD are really just an extended outtake of a single scene that apparently Seann William Scott and his co-stars just couldn’t get through without laughing. I guess you had to be there.
There are also some “webisodes” created to promote the film online, also pretty hit-and-miss, though the one in which Conrad recorded a phone call from Scott in which the actor, evidently jealous that Reilly will be doing his “Canadian accent,” pitches him on doing an accent of his own. It’s pretty funny stuff, if only because I was never really clear if Scott was joking or not (Conrad alludes to him being a bit eccentric in his commentary). Overall The Promotion is a solid comedy tailor-made to find its audience on DVD.
Labels: comedy, DVD review, John C. Reilly
¶ 11:15 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
DVD Review: Semi-Pro
THE MOVIE
For me, there are two different kinds of Will Ferrell movies: The truly top-shelf stuff in which he makes me laugh almost every time he opens his mouth or does anything (Old School and his Adam McKay collaborations Anchorman and Talladega Nights), and the B- or C-list movies where he often seems to be going through the motions, with results ranging anywhere from piss-poor (Kicking and Screaming) to just-okay (Blades of Glory). In the latter types i
t often seems like he’s just running through the Will Ferrell playbook, yelling a lot, doing the odd pratfall and basically just playing an obnoxious jackass. (I’m not including his more dramatic stuff, like that Woody Allen movie he did and Stranger Than Fiction, which I quite enjoyed.) Semi-Pro isn’t as good as the A-level Ferrell movies, but it’s way better than the other stuff. A few times it scrapes up against the bottom of greatness, but it’s not really anything we haven’t seen before, either as a sports movie or a Will Ferrell comedy.
(Speaking of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, I just wanted to slip in a few words about how excited I am about their next movie, Step Brothers, about two lazy man-children living with their single parents – the other is John C. Reilly – who are forced to live together when their folks marry each other. The trailer is here.)
Lots of people have pointed out Ferrell’s apparent predilection for sports movies; Semi-Pro is his third after tackling soccer (Kicking and Screaming) and NASCAR (Talladega Nights). And as played-out as Ferrell doing sports comedies may seem at this point, Semi-Pro, like Talladega Nights, has the advantage of the sport it follows – in this case ABA basketball – being inherently sort of ridiculous to begin with (NASCAR fan hatemail: GO!). The other edge Semi-Pro has on the other lower-tier Ferrell flicks is that Ferrell has created a pretty great character in Flint Tropics player/coach/owner Jackie Moon. He’s no Ron Burgundy, but those Old Spice ads alone made me laugh harder than anything in Blades of Glory.
The reason a dude in his late ‘30s who isn’t even that good at basketball is playing on and running an ostensibly pro basketball team is one of the film’s funniest jokes: Jackie Moon recorded a one-hit wonder soul song called ‘Love Me Sexy,’ and used the money he made from its brief success to buy an ABA franchise and move it back to his hometown of Flint, Michigan. The actual song ‘Love Me Sexy’ sounds amazingly authentic (it was crafted by veteran soul musician Nile Rodgers), and it was stuck in my head on and off for weeks after I saw the movie.
The plot of Semi-Pro is standard sports-movie fare: As the ABA collapses, the league signs a merger deal with the NBA that will see four ABA teams absorbed into the bigger league. Moon manages to convince the ABA to let the teams with the four best records into the NBA – rather than the teams in markets the NBA actually wants – kicking off the Flint Tropics’ push for fourth place. (I have a weakness for sports movies where the Big Game isn’t actually for the championship, but rather a smaller prize – like the Indians trying to win the AL East pennant in Major League – so the idea of fourth place as the goal amused me on its own.)
Comedy’s the most subjective of all genres, so I realize that what I think is hilarious (like Moon instructing his team to wear eyeliner to distract their opponents), other people might find just stupid. But I spent most of Semi-Pro’s running time either laughing or grinning, and in my books
that’s a score. (I debated putting a basketball reference in there for a while, but decided against it. I think I made the right decision.)
The film’s secret weapon is Woody Harrelson, who plays a washed-up ABA veteran whose claim to fame was winning an NBA title with the Celtics as a bench player. Harrelson, as most people know, is really funny (and also a great basketball player – White Men Can’t Jump kicked off a basketball craze when I was in junior high), but he’s also a great actor, and he ends up investing the character of Monix with the kind of depth and reality that you don’t typically find in zany sports comedies.
Semi-Pro also has murderer’s row of excellent comic actors in supporting roles, like the brilliant Will Arnett (of Arrested Development fame; look for me to go on about that show in future posts), Andy Richter, Rob Corddry (see Blackballed, post-haste) and David Koechner, as well as a guy I’d never heard of named Andrew Daly who destroyed me as Tropics broadcaster Dick Pepperfield. After this movie I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for him.
The two-disc, unrated “Let’s Get Sweaty” DVD includes extra footage not in the theatrical version, largely consisting of a subplot about Moon having a skanky wife, and while there are a few good jokes in there about her and their relationship, their inclusion seems motivated at least in part to up the T&A factor.
Overall Semi-Pro is a solid effort from – love him or hate him – one of the titans of modern comedy movies. If you’re not into Will Ferrell this one won’t convert you, but if you’re a fan of Ferrell or sports comedies or both, Semi-Pro is deserving of your attention.
GRADE: B
THE EXTRAS
The Semi-Pro DVD has pretty much the perfect amount of bonus material, and manages to straddle the line between giving you more information than you could possibly need about a silly comedy and not giving you anything worth spending your time watching. It doesn’t have the insane amount of stuff found on the Talladega Nights or Anchorman DVDs (in the case of the latter, they had so much extra footage they assembled a whole other version of the movie), but there’s a nice balance between the usual making-of features and deleted/extended scenes and outtakes and improv stuff we’ve come to expect from comedy DVDs.
There’s a nice collection of featurettes about the movie, the most interesting of which are about recreating the ABA for the film. The ABA, the DVD goes to great lengths to explain (ugh, I feel old), was a real league in the ‘70s, and the folks behind Semi-Pro put quite a bit of effort into making it as realistic a portrayal as possible….for a Will Ferrell comedy. (Apparently “free gerbil night” was an actual ABA promotion, and not something they made up for the film. Huh.) There’s also a cool little feature on the ABA players with small roles in the movie, as well as a longer featutette on the film’s director, Kent Alterman, where all the cast and crew say all the requisite nice things about him. All of these benefit from not running too long, so before you can get bored of the accolades for Alterman, the thing’s over. Given that Sem
i-Pro is based somewhat in reality, it’s nice that they didn’t miss a chance to actually fill viewers in on that reality, especially for younger ones who may not realize that there really was an ABA back in the day.
The real treats are in the stuff from the cutting room floor. There’s a handful of deleted scenes, as well as an improv reel from various sequences in the movie in which Ferrell and co. try out different lines and versions of scenes. My personal favourite was Ferrell’s varying exclamations of agony when the aforementioned mascara plan goes awry. Almost every take is actually better than what’s in the finished film (which is still hilarious). There are also a couple of brilliant little promotional bits that run a minute or so each that were apparently done for the web to promote the film in which Moon is interviewed by Dick Pepperfield courtside. These are clearly improvised, and are almost as funny as anything in the movie. Overall the “Let’s Get Sweaty” of Semi-Pro is a great DVD package for a solid comedy, and is worth checking out.
For me, there are two different kinds of Will Ferrell movies: The truly top-shelf stuff in which he makes me laugh almost every time he opens his mouth or does anything (Old School and his Adam McKay collaborations Anchorman and Talladega Nights), and the B- or C-list movies where he often seems to be going through the motions, with results ranging anywhere from piss-poor (Kicking and Screaming) to just-okay (Blades of Glory). In the latter types i
t often seems like he’s just running through the Will Ferrell playbook, yelling a lot, doing the odd pratfall and basically just playing an obnoxious jackass. (I’m not including his more dramatic stuff, like that Woody Allen movie he did and Stranger Than Fiction, which I quite enjoyed.) Semi-Pro isn’t as good as the A-level Ferrell movies, but it’s way better than the other stuff. A few times it scrapes up against the bottom of greatness, but it’s not really anything we haven’t seen before, either as a sports movie or a Will Ferrell comedy.(Speaking of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, I just wanted to slip in a few words about how excited I am about their next movie, Step Brothers, about two lazy man-children living with their single parents – the other is John C. Reilly – who are forced to live together when their folks marry each other. The trailer is here.)
Lots of people have pointed out Ferrell’s apparent predilection for sports movies; Semi-Pro is his third after tackling soccer (Kicking and Screaming) and NASCAR (Talladega Nights). And as played-out as Ferrell doing sports comedies may seem at this point, Semi-Pro, like Talladega Nights, has the advantage of the sport it follows – in this case ABA basketball – being inherently sort of ridiculous to begin with (NASCAR fan hatemail: GO!). The other edge Semi-Pro has on the other lower-tier Ferrell flicks is that Ferrell has created a pretty great character in Flint Tropics player/coach/owner Jackie Moon. He’s no Ron Burgundy, but those Old Spice ads alone made me laugh harder than anything in Blades of Glory.
The reason a dude in his late ‘30s who isn’t even that good at basketball is playing on and running an ostensibly pro basketball team is one of the film’s funniest jokes: Jackie Moon recorded a one-hit wonder soul song called ‘Love Me Sexy,’ and used the money he made from its brief success to buy an ABA franchise and move it back to his hometown of Flint, Michigan. The actual song ‘Love Me Sexy’ sounds amazingly authentic (it was crafted by veteran soul musician Nile Rodgers), and it was stuck in my head on and off for weeks after I saw the movie.
The plot of Semi-Pro is standard sports-movie fare: As the ABA collapses, the league signs a merger deal with the NBA that will see four ABA teams absorbed into the bigger league. Moon manages to convince the ABA to let the teams with the four best records into the NBA – rather than the teams in markets the NBA actually wants – kicking off the Flint Tropics’ push for fourth place. (I have a weakness for sports movies where the Big Game isn’t actually for the championship, but rather a smaller prize – like the Indians trying to win the AL East pennant in Major League – so the idea of fourth place as the goal amused me on its own.)
Comedy’s the most subjective of all genres, so I realize that what I think is hilarious (like Moon instructing his team to wear eyeliner to distract their opponents), other people might find just stupid. But I spent most of Semi-Pro’s running time either laughing or grinning, and in my books
that’s a score. (I debated putting a basketball reference in there for a while, but decided against it. I think I made the right decision.)The film’s secret weapon is Woody Harrelson, who plays a washed-up ABA veteran whose claim to fame was winning an NBA title with the Celtics as a bench player. Harrelson, as most people know, is really funny (and also a great basketball player – White Men Can’t Jump kicked off a basketball craze when I was in junior high), but he’s also a great actor, and he ends up investing the character of Monix with the kind of depth and reality that you don’t typically find in zany sports comedies.
Semi-Pro also has murderer’s row of excellent comic actors in supporting roles, like the brilliant Will Arnett (of Arrested Development fame; look for me to go on about that show in future posts), Andy Richter, Rob Corddry (see Blackballed, post-haste) and David Koechner, as well as a guy I’d never heard of named Andrew Daly who destroyed me as Tropics broadcaster Dick Pepperfield. After this movie I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for him.
The two-disc, unrated “Let’s Get Sweaty” DVD includes extra footage not in the theatrical version, largely consisting of a subplot about Moon having a skanky wife, and while there are a few good jokes in there about her and their relationship, their inclusion seems motivated at least in part to up the T&A factor.
Overall Semi-Pro is a solid effort from – love him or hate him – one of the titans of modern comedy movies. If you’re not into Will Ferrell this one won’t convert you, but if you’re a fan of Ferrell or sports comedies or both, Semi-Pro is deserving of your attention.
GRADE: B
THE EXTRAS
The Semi-Pro DVD has pretty much the perfect amount of bonus material, and manages to straddle the line between giving you more information than you could possibly need about a silly comedy and not giving you anything worth spending your time watching. It doesn’t have the insane amount of stuff found on the Talladega Nights or Anchorman DVDs (in the case of the latter, they had so much extra footage they assembled a whole other version of the movie), but there’s a nice balance between the usual making-of features and deleted/extended scenes and outtakes and improv stuff we’ve come to expect from comedy DVDs.
There’s a nice collection of featurettes about the movie, the most interesting of which are about recreating the ABA for the film. The ABA, the DVD goes to great lengths to explain (ugh, I feel old), was a real league in the ‘70s, and the folks behind Semi-Pro put quite a bit of effort into making it as realistic a portrayal as possible….for a Will Ferrell comedy. (Apparently “free gerbil night” was an actual ABA promotion, and not something they made up for the film. Huh.) There’s also a cool little feature on the ABA players with small roles in the movie, as well as a longer featutette on the film’s director, Kent Alterman, where all the cast and crew say all the requisite nice things about him. All of these benefit from not running too long, so before you can get bored of the accolades for Alterman, the thing’s over. Given that Sem
i-Pro is based somewhat in reality, it’s nice that they didn’t miss a chance to actually fill viewers in on that reality, especially for younger ones who may not realize that there really was an ABA back in the day.The real treats are in the stuff from the cutting room floor. There’s a handful of deleted scenes, as well as an improv reel from various sequences in the movie in which Ferrell and co. try out different lines and versions of scenes. My personal favourite was Ferrell’s varying exclamations of agony when the aforementioned mascara plan goes awry. Almost every take is actually better than what’s in the finished film (which is still hilarious). There are also a couple of brilliant little promotional bits that run a minute or so each that were apparently done for the web to promote the film in which Moon is interviewed by Dick Pepperfield courtside. These are clearly improvised, and are almost as funny as anything in the movie. Overall the “Let’s Get Sweaty” of Semi-Pro is a great DVD package for a solid comedy, and is worth checking out.
Labels: comedy, DVD review, John C. Reilly, sports movies
¶ 11:51 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Welcome to Sea World, Kid.
Hey there. Welcome to People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo, Captivate's blog about movies and DVDs. I'm your esteemed (sort of) host, Justin Anderson. First things first, some things you should know, in no particular order:
1) The name of the blog is taken from Boogie Nights, one of my favourite movies. I don't actually look all that much like Han Solo (though neither does John C. Reilly), but People Tell Me I Look Like Lando Calrissian doesn't have the same ring to it.
2) I used to edit a DVD industry trade magazine here in Canada, and I have a pretty ridiculous DVD collection. I tell you this not to brag (as "owning lots of stuff" isn't the kind of thing I take pride in; like all good Canadians, I am a socialist), but rather to hopefully establish that I Know What I'm Talking About.
3) Sometimes I capitalize things for no reason.
So watch this space; I've got lots of cool stuff planned, mostly based around me telling you what I think about movies. Okay. Hard part's over. Now let's get these other piggies wiggling.
1) The name of the blog is taken from Boogie Nights, one of my favourite movies. I don't actually look all that much like Han Solo (though neither does John C. Reilly), but People Tell Me I Look Like Lando Calrissian doesn't have the same ring to it.
2) I used to edit a DVD industry trade magazine here in Canada, and I have a pretty ridiculous DVD collection. I tell you this not to brag (as "owning lots of stuff" isn't the kind of thing I take pride in; like all good Canadians, I am a socialist), but rather to hopefully establish that I Know What I'm Talking About.
3) Sometimes I capitalize things for no reason.
So watch this space; I've got lots of cool stuff planned, mostly based around me telling you what I think about movies. Okay. Hard part's over. Now let's get these other piggies wiggling.
Labels: DVD, John C. Reilly
¶ 9:15 AM 0 Comments
