1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

The next idea for a lame-ass Will Ferrell sports movie...

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Starman, Sep 25, 2015.

  1. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    ... Whatever it is, I beseech Hollywood to snuff it in the cradle.

    When was the last good one? Has there ever been a really good one?

    This baseball thing on HBO is a real load of shit even by Ferrell's subterranean standards.
     
  2. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    Haven't seen the HBO spring training piece yet. It was a charity fund-raiser, so even if it's not funny at least it raised some money.

    What's he done now, three sports spoofs as features? It's been a while since he's done a feature.
    'Blades of Glory' was the least funny. 'Talladega Nights' was funny, but I've never understood the wild popularity.
    'Semi-Pro' tanked at the box office but is far and away the funniest of the three. Very funny. Much like 'Anchorman,' the audience missed that one.
     
  3. TyWebb

    TyWebb Well-Known Member

    You prefer Semi-Pro over Talladega Nights? Blasphemy, I say. While I agree Semi-Pro was under-appreciated, I don't think it can hold a candle to the combination of Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Sasha Cohen.

    Ferrell is a known entity at this point. You are either going to love his stuff or you aren't. Personally, I think he's one of the funniest people on the planet and is in the my top three best SNL cast members. But I'm kind of a cultural aficionado that way.
     
  4. swingline

    swingline Well-Known Member

    I find Ferrell as funny as Sandler and Cohen, which is to say not at all. With Cohen, especially, his movies seem mean-spirited; I'm surprised he didn't get his ass royally kicked while making Borat.

    Ferrell is a one-note clown, and Sandler panders to the lowest common denominator. Trash, both.
     
  5. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Ferrell was the worst part of Semi-Pro. Woody Harrelson was OK in kind of a grown-up version of his WMCJ character.

    Ferrell is hitting the same brick wall that Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey hit before --- just pounding the same dead horse too many times.

    They're both funny sometimes-- I loved Anchorman 1 -- but too much of the same thing is just too much.
     
  6. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    The baseball thing, it's mostly unscripted reacting to things, isn't it? Or cheesy attempts at humor? I admittedly haven't seen it yet, but I was under the impression that it was intentionally at a lower level than his other stuff, like something breezy and simple to film during the summer. I wouldn't put it at the same level as his movie exploits, which I generally like.

    Bonus fun thing if you like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay - The commentary tracks for their combined movies are absolutely insane. Talladega Nights, they're in-character as being 25 years in the future, when McKay has died from a hammerhead shark attack (his "son" Darnell provides commentary), Ferrell now does community theater in Mississippi, Jon C. Reilly is a militia captain, and they shit on Jack McBrayer the whole time. Anchorman 2, Paul Rudd uses his "custom" sound equipment by Kenner, from Radio Shack.
     
  7. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    Bill Murray, Phil Hartman, Eddie Murphy. Who are you voting off the SNL island?
     
    Riptide likes this.
  8. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    You didn't ask me, but I'm probably going Murray, if we're basing it off what they did on SNL. Murray obviously did great work on the show - all three did - but I think he became a megastar after he left the show. His run on the show was from 1977 to 1980, according to Wikipedia, with Caddyshack coming out in 1980. Stripes and Ghostbusters came soon after. Also, while early SNL was obviously culture-changing, it feels really druggy and tougher for me to watch as someone born in 1984. I think the best shows from the 1980s and 1990s hold up better than the best from the 1970s.

    Murphy was a supernova, and he was pretty much carrying the show his years as a castmember. Wikipedia has him credited with 1980 to 1984, longer than Murray, although I think his last year he might have just been on a couple shows, not the whole run.

    Hartman wasn't a top star outside of the show like those two, but he was nicknamed the Glue by his other performers and the support staff, and he showed so god damn much range. He could be the bombastic star of a sketch (the Lovitz one where he plays a washed up World War II actor), do a funny impression / caricature (Clinton, Reagan, Sinatra), or just be the straight man (all of the Matt Foley sketches, he plays the exasperated dad). He was pretty much the perfect actor for that show. I realize it's a kind of weird comparison, but if he hadn't been murdered, I wonder if he could have had a Bryan Cranston-like second act, where he played a super dark role in a serious film or show post-SNL.
     
  9. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    Think of all the great things Phil Hartman probably would have done over the last 17 years.

    I still can't think of a Hollywood death that disturbs me more.
     
    Ace and Riptide like this.
  10. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Murray and Aykroyd were kinda-similar super-utility guys on SNL who branched out to straight drama roles after leaving teevee. I think Hartman could definitely have been great in a Walter White Everyman-gone-bad type of role.
     
  11. Roscablo

    Roscablo Well-Known Member

    I think most the stuff on the field was. But they didn't show a lot of that. The interactions with the teams actually seemed forced and scripted, not like they didn't know he was going to be there. Then the commentary on the show was really cheesy and forced. I didn't mind the show, but I was hoping for more. Would have liked to see more of the on the field stuff or even the getting from one place to the other since it appeared he was very behind schedule but they didn't really go into it. Maybe it wasn't as fun as thought and that's why they didn't do those two things more. Way too much commentary from Farrell though.
     
  12. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    How someone who is as spectacularly unfunny as Ferrell is has a career is beyond me. Does he have incriminating photos of all of Hollywood's bigshots?
     
    Riptide likes this.
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page