Semi-Pro

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Semi-Pro's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Semi-Pro completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 8 April 2008.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Semi-Pro contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell), a man who made his fortune from his hit song “Love Me Sexy” is the owner, coach, promoter and power forward of the Tropics, a semi-pro basketball team, which is currently ranked bottom and is lucky to draw forty spectators to a game. Jackie has high hopes of the Tropics merging with the NBA pro teams, but when Jackie attends a merger meeting, he discovers that only four ABA teams, the top four, will be merged with the NBA, the remaining ABA teams are to be dissolved. Further, the top four teams must also have capacity crowds attending their games.

Jackie employs all manner of promotional gimmicks in an effort to increase home crowd attendance. Also, an attempt to lift his team’s performance, he trades a washing machine for an ex NBA player named Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson). It doesn’t take long before the players to realise that the Monix knows what he is doing, and the team makes him their new coach. As a result, the Tropics begin to start winning games, game attendance increases and it begins to look as if the Tropics just might make fourth place.

Unfortunately, the Tropics lose their star player Clarence ((Andre Benjamin) when he is traded to a rival team the San Antonio Spurs and their real struggle begins.

Themes

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

The world of semi-professional and professional sport

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

Semi-Pro contains some low-level comedic and slapstick type violence. Examples include:

• Jackie becomes upset and smashes a chair against a conference table several times. He also shouts and bites his hand.
• A group of men are playing poker, one of the men calls the Tropics commentator Lou Redwood (Will Arnett), a “jive turkey.” Lou takes great offence and pulls out a handgun, which he points at the offending man’s head and threatens to shoot him. After a couple of seconds, Lou bursts out laughing and tells the other players that the gun is not loaded and pulls the trigger to prove it. Jackie and the other player then take turns pretending to shoot themselves while laughing loudly. But when the gun is tossed onto a bench top the gun goes off with the bullet ricocheting off the walls until it hits a man in his arm that is already in plaster cast.  Blood starts to soak the plaster cast.
• During a game between the Tropics and a rival team, an all out brawl develops. The fight involved punches to the face, stomach, and kidneys, a man is elbowed in the back, a man is hit over the head with a shoe and another hit over the head with a telephone receiver. There are lots of sound effects to accompany the fight with grunt and groans, but no blood and gore.
• After a game, Monix walks out of the stadium and kicks out the window of a police car while police are in the car. He is arrested as a result.
• To toughen up the Tropics, Monix makes the team practice hard until the players vomit and we see the players in toilet cubicles throwing up. Jackie tells Monix that he has never thrown up in his life, and Monix punches Jackie in the stomach causing Jackie to gag several times and then vomit over Monix with the action heard rather than seen.
• During a promotional stunt, Jackie, while wearing roller skates, jumps over several cheerleaders (“The Ball Girls”) lying on the ground. He lands on top of the last girl but she is uninjured.
• During a promotional stunt, Jackie wrestles a bear in a cage. We hear Jackie say that the bear is insane and that it will rip his head off. Jackie hits the bear across the head several times with the bear lunging at Jackie. There are lots of growling sounds, and the bear looks as if it is clawing and bitting Jackie’s arm and head with Jackie sporting several cuts and scratches on his chest and face. The bear escapes from the cage and we see people panicking and running from the stadium. Later in the film, we see the bear randomly lunging at other people.
• During a game Jackie is knocked unconscious and is carried off the court. Later Jackie is revived and is OK.
• During celebrations following the Tropics winning the last game, people are depicted smashing bottle against a wall, and several policemen turn over their own car.  

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Children in this age group are likely to be scared by some of the above scenes, particularly those involving the bear.

Aged eight to thirteen

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group may also be scared by some of the scenes listed above.

Over the age of thirteen

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Children in this age group are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in this film.

Product placement

None of concern

Sexual references

Semi-Pro contains numerous crude sexual references. Examples include:

• At the start of the film, Jackie Love sings his one hit song “Love Me Sexy” which includes lines such as “Baby who’s ready to lick me sexy’; “Love me sexy”; “Suck me sexy”; and “Swamp sexy.” 
• conversation between sports commentators about catching and passing on “VD”
• One sports commentator tells another that some women like a small penis.
• A sports commentator discusses the size of another man’s wife’s breasts by describing her breasts as, “cannons”, “big old boobies”, “a tremendous set of boobs”, “she looks structurally sound”.
• A man tells a number of women that he would like to “make sweet tender slow love to each and every one of you.”
• During a game, one player tells another player, “How are your mum and sister? It’s been about 12 weeks since I porked them.”
• One man tells another man, “…you watch a porn movie doesn’t mean you got laid.”
• One man tells another man, “They make an excellent fuck film.”
• A reference is made to a “Boner machine.”
• One man says to another man “Do you need a hand job?” with the second man replying, “Suck my cock.”
• One man says to another man “Let me get my maxi pad out of my purse.”
• One man says, “I was out there grabbing ball, I grabbed some of your balls.” A man responded with, “You’ve got the softest hand in the business.” 
• When Jackie Love realised that the Tropics would be dissolved, he said to the Tropics Ball Girls, “I always thought I would sleep with some of you.”
• During a locker room scene involving Monix and his ex girlfriend, we hear Monix make some comments that appear to be a sexual proposition, until the camera shows the woman putting ice on Monix’s injured knee.
• One man makes the comment, “Lets get some pussy.”
• One scene involves a mild confrontation between Monix and his ex girlfriend Lynn. Lynn asks Monix if he wanted to apologise for cheating on her twice. Monix says, “I cheated on you once, there just happened to be two girls there.”
• A reference is made to “blow-jobs”, and a man getting his “dick sucked after the game.”
• A reference is made to a man getting an erection. 

Nudity and sexual activity

Semi-Pro contains some sexual activity and nudity examples include:

• There are several scenes of women in bikinis dancing.
• During one scene Monix and his ex girlfriend Lynn engage in sexual activity on a couch. We hear the sounds of both groaning and see Lynn straddling Monix, who is lying on the couch. We see Monix rubbing his hands up and down Lynn’s bare thighs. Unbeknown to Monix and Lynn, Lynn’s boyfriend walks in and sits at a table. The boyfriend appears to be masturbating under the table while watching Monix and Lynn having sex. Lynn sees her boyfriend and yells with Monix standing up with his pants around his ankles. When the boyfriend is asked what he was doing he replied, “Just sitting here watching and stuff”.
• While in a locker room, Monix caresses Lynn’s clothed thighs and tries to kiss her on the back of the neck, they are interrupted when other team members walk in.
• A photo is shown depicting Jackie nude sitting with a basketball between his legs and covering his genitals.
• A number of women wear low cut tops that reveal cleavage.
• In one scene, Jackie sqats on the ground with a basketball between his legs prior to the ball being thrown, the camera focuses on Jackie’s groin and a glimpse of underwear.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie and reference to substance use, including:

• A sports announcer drinks what appears to be scotch from a glass while announcing a basketball game. He is also smoking a cigarette. When a second commentator makes a remark about chain smoking not being very healthy, the first commentator responds, “I like to smoke when I drink”.
• A sports commentator makes reference to a spectator being “…on something that’s a little home grown” and being hyped up on “Goof Ball” and “Grass.”
• Reference is made to Monix never playing a game unless he is drunk.
• During a board meeting all the board members have glasses of what appears to be scotch in front of them, and some are smoking cigars.
• TV announcers lighting up cigarettes and smoke.
• A comment is made that there is nothing in the rulebook that says you can’t play while you are drunk.
• Men and women drink bottles of beer at a nightclub.

Coarse language

Semi-Pro contains frequent crude, coarse language and putdowns throughout. Examples include:

• “Retard; dirty hippy; jive turkey; fucking idiot; Dumb son of a bitch; Lucky as shit; Boobies; Boobs; Fuck off; Get the funk out of my face; Shit;, we suck; He called you a cock-sucker; I’ll see you fuckers in hell’; Good lord, he’s being a real dick; Feels like I got cat’s piss in my eye; Bailing your arse out of jail; You mother-fucking cock-suckers; get your dick sucked after the game; God damn; It’s a shit fucking sandwich.

The movie's message

Semi-Pro is a comedy that satires the semi-pro basketball culture of the 1970s. The film targets an older adolescent and adult audience and the comedy content, which at times contains some witty and clever humour, relies rather heavily upon sexual references and overuse of coarse language.

The main messages from this movie is that American semi-pro and pro basketball is about making money and filling seats rather than competition, sport and sportsmanship.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with older children include:

• commitment to success
• endurance through adversity
• supporting friends and team mates
  

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

• the attitudes of the male characters to women and sexual relationships
• the attitudes towards drinking and smoking shown