'Semi-Pro'

Anyone old enough to remember when the New York Nets regaled the Nassau Coliseum by doing everything with a red-white-and-blue basketball short of boiling it for breakfast can appreciate the comedic possibilities to be mined from the American Basketball Association.

Those kitschy-ugly uniforms alone screamed "1970s" as loudly as leisure suits and Pet Rocks. And while mile-high Afros have made furtive comebacks on the hard court in recent years (hope you enjoy Cleveland, Ben Wallace), they'll always be connected with the hothouse-flower gaudiness of an ABA that expired into partial merger with the National Basketball Association by 1976.

"Semi-Pro," on paper, looked to be the perfect vehicle for looking back at the ABA in all its Day-Glo excess and roadshow tackiness. Its principal advantage is Will Ferrell, who solidified his box-office mojo by cuffing stock-car racing in 2006's "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and slapping around figure skating in last year's "Blades of Glory." And he helped make 2004's "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" into a definitive 1970s comedy for those who weren't alive that decade.

Sounds perfect. And so you keep watching "Semi-Pro" and waiting for its potentially hilarious setup to deliver the goods. And after a while, you realize that the laughter comes only in anticipation of a payoff that never quite arrives. It's all too apparent that Ferrell's comedies have congealed into a formula framed to meet expectations without quite satisfying them.

In "Semi-Pro," Ferrell assumes another version of his aggressive-naïf persona in the form of Jackie Moon, a "blue-eyed-soul" singer who's parlayed the royalties from his lone hit into owning the inaptly-named Flint (Mich.) Tropics. He's also the team's coach, power forward and courtside announcer, desperately trying to draw big-time business from his dwindling Rust Belt audience.

The Tropics' relatively meager box office makes it the ABA franchise least likely to be absorbed into the league's impending merger with the NBA. Yet as with "Talladega's" Ricky Bobby and Ron Burgundy, Jackie Moon doesn't know the meaning of "capitulate," much less how to spell it. So he trades the team's washing machine for a washed-up NBA star named Ed Monix ( Woody Harrelson), who gets Jackie's ragtag outfit to begin thinking team fundamentals.

Ferrell's shtick is applied just enough to glue the movie's random sight gags together. And a few of them actually get you giggling, such as the potty-mouthed priest (Matt Walsh), who acts as referee, or the addled hippie (Jackie Earle Haley) who wins a half-time shooting contest but doesn't understand why he can't cash his giant-sized check. But while Harrelson's still got game as both a "baller" and a comedic actor, the movie's aimless tossing of weightless bits squanders such interesting presences as Maura Tierney, playing Monix's ex-wife.

Still, those who will show up for even phantom jokes won't mind the lapses because "Semi-Pro" is an indulgent movie about an indulgent era tailor-made for an indulgent audience.

SEMI-PRO (R). Once again, Will Ferrell drapes his goofy man-child persona in 1970s polyester as the owner-coach-power forward of an American Basketball Association franchise on its last legs. The setups are promising, but the payoffs are as flat as an airless red-white-and-blue ball. With Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin, Maura Tierney, Rob Corddry and Andy Richter. 1:25 (vulgarities, sexual material). At area theaters.