Get Hard

Exactly who is carrying whom?

Grade: C

Director: Etan Cohen

Starring: Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Craig T. Nelson, Alison Brie, Edwina Findley Dickerson and T.I.

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.

Given the fact that Get Hard is premised around the offensive prejudices held by one of its lead characters, it’s sadly ironic that the film spends the bulk of its running time and attempts at comedy exacerbating racial, gender and sexual stereotypes. It starts with the inherent double entendre in the movie’s title, which is repeated to exhaustion throughout. It ends with a climax whose utter laziness is preferable to offending another demographic before the closing credits roll.

The teaming of Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart sounds like a match befitting the comedic zeitgeist, and even through this muck of a movie, that impression proves accurate. Ferrell plays James King, a wealthy hedge-fund manager engaged to a spoiled trophy wife-to-be (Alison Brie) whose father (Craig T. Nelson) is James’ billionaire boss. James’ elitist life is upended when he’s framed for securities fraud and sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin. Fearing the perils of prison life, James hires Darnell (Hart), his car washer and thus the only black person anywhere in his orbit, to teach him how to “get hard” and survive on the inside.

Here’s the hook: James presumes Darnell has been to prison because, well, he’s black. But Darnell’s closest brush with the law is inserting himself into a recitation of the plot to Boyz n the Hood. With the guidance of his gangbanger cousin Russell (the rapper T.I.), Darnell morphs into a state pen sensei training James on the fine arts of mad dog faces, crafting shivs and “keistering.”

There are obvious aspirations of Trading Places at play here—a scene where James and Darnell crash an aryan biker hangout also borrows from 48 Hrs. Writer-director Etan Cohen—who once wrote Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder, but also Men in Black 3—squanders the marriage of Ferrell’s blowhard doofus and Hart’s machine-gun mania on base humor with broad resonance. Beyond the race and gender gags, the plot constantly returns to prison rape yucks and a conception of even causal homosexuality centered around predatory practices and bathroom rendezvouses.

What’s equally regrettable is that there’s actually the kernel of an insightful comedy here. You glimpse it when James educates Russell’s Crenshaw Kings pals on the vagaries of white-collar crime, leading one to astutely declare that its even more “gangsta” than standard issue stickups.

These flashes can’t overcome the rank wrongheadedness of a script that compounds its insipidness with jokes and set-ups that will feel dated by the time you reach the theater’s exit door. It’s an Adam Sandler movie with funnier front men—not exactly the trading places the filmmakers had in mind.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

The latest in enhanced marketing techniques

Grade: B–

Director: Adam McKay

Starring: Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden and Meagan Good

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 59 min.

When last we saw Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), that polyester paragon of old school TV news, he was resisting the changing feminine face of his medium in the 1970s. In Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, he’s among the vanguard of the all-day news network and the ultimate dumbing-down of that same medium. That premise makes for a good half-hour or so of script material; the rest of Anchorman 2 is the sort of extraneous padding that comedic performers like Ferrell and Adam Sandler ultimately have the unfortunate clout to foist into their movies.

Ousted from his NYC anchor’s chair alongside his wife Veronica (Christina Applegate), Ron lands a job working the graveyard shift at GNN, the nation’s first 24-hour news channel. Locked in a ratings battle with fellow anchor Jack Lime (James Marden), the network’s prime time prima donna, Ron stumbles onto the notion of telling people “the news they want to hear” instead of “the news they need to hear.” So, Ron’s teleprompter gets filled with pap about kittens, car chases and, above all, “America,” all accented by a dizzying array of onscreen graphics. Dimwitted weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) moves outdoors, where every strong breeze is conflated into a deadly maelstrom. Loutish sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner) shows nothing but a highlight reel full of home runs and hard tackles (“and NO soccer,” Ron demands), all punctuated by his catchphrase “Whammy!” And beat reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) logs stories about strip clubs and, well, “America.”

This sardonic framework culminates during the film’s final act with a madcap battle royale between various spinoff news channels, a parade of horribles embodying the media oversaturation that Ron’s bright idea would ultimately bring about. The scene’s cavalcade of cameos might smack of a narrative crutch. But, it breaks the monotony and, in the case of an appearance by a certain Canadian comedian, shows what a true physical funnyman can do with even the barest material.

Unfortunately, it’s also a scene that encapsulates everything good and banal about Anchorman 2. While the specter of a fight to the death between warring tribes from the BBC, MTV, E! and History Channel is hilarious, the incongruous inclusion of a werewolf, minotaur and the ghost of Stonewall Jackson is the sort of pointless surreality that populates rest of the film.

Too much time is spent on what Brick, Champ and Brian were doing with their lives before Ron gets the band back together. Same with an utterly unfunny subplot involving Brick’s non sequitur-filled flirtations with fellow oddball Chani (Kristen Wiig)—a little Brick goes a LONG way. When Ron is abruptly afflicted with blindness (too complicated to explain here), Ferrell’s otherwise droll portrayal of Ron’s self-pity party strays into stagnant waters, particularly when Ron and his son nurse-feed an injured shark they name Doby back to health. Even the structure of two verbal gags was lifted from the Austin Powers movies.

And then there are the lunkheaded attempts at off-color humor, which Ferrell and director Adam McKay include without an ounce of wit. Hearing Ron, Champ and others constantly refer to “blacks,” “Mexicans,” “lesbians,” and “Jews” isn’t brazenly non-PC, it’s just uncomfortably icky without sufficient satirical context. The ebb is Ron’s affair with Linda (Meagan Good), his feisty African-American producer, mined for race-centric riffs that include a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner scene in which Ron adopts an exaggerated black-cent in order to communicate with Linda’s otherwise erudite family.

Anchorman 2 is 15 minutes longer than its predecessor, but it feels like 50. Trimming a half-hour of self-indulgence would have left a solid, even subversive satire. As it is, this is one anchorman that desperately needs a copy editor.

The Campaign

Still more fun to costar with than Jon Heder

 Grade: C +
Director: Jay Roach
Starring: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 25 min.

To really enjoy The Campaign, it’s best to be a) a Will Ferrell fan; b) a Zach Galifianakis fan; or c) from North Carolina. It isn’t surprising that this comedy about small-town candidates battling to win a seat in Congress is set in the Tar Heel State (by way of Louisiana, with filming taking place before N.C. state lawmakers added $60 million in filmmaking tax incentives this year). Ferrell’s parents hail from Roanoke Rapids and he still has relatives living in Cary. Galifianakis was born and raised in Wilkesboro and attended N.C. State University. Moreover, Nick Galifianakis, Zach’s uncle, was a three-term North Carolina congressman who lost the 1972 election for U.S. Senate to a former television commentator named Jesse Helms, a campaign marred by slogans denigrating Galifianakis’ Greek heritage: “Jesse Helms: He’s One of Us.”

Thus, there’s sneaky significance behind a seemingly offhand remark that the racist father of candidate Marty Huggins, played by Galifianakis, is a GOP heavyweight who once worked as a political operative for Helms. So, too, in the specter of Marty, the town and family oddball with a heart of gold, pitted against an opponent skilled in the dark art of mudslinging.

Marty is recruited by two wealthy brothers and industrialists (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to run against four-term congressman Cam Brady (Ferrell), a superficial politician armed with a sculpted coiffure and crowd-pleasing stump speeches about “America, Jesus and freedom.”

Marty, who’s a Southern dandy who works as tourism director for the fictitious burg of Hammond, undergoes a makeover led by his shadowy, take-no-prisoners campaign manager (Dylan McDermott). Gone are Marty’s cardigans and twin pugs, replaced by a chocolate lab and a golden retriever that “test well.” His house décor is soon replete with guns, Bibles and deer heads.

The Campaign finds its satirical groove during a series of absurd attacks that nonetheless ring uncomfortably true in today’s political environment. Cam insinuates that the mustachioed Marty has ties to al-Qaida, while Marty trumpets a canyon-colored short story Cam wrote in grade school about a fantasy land where "everything is free" as proof of the incumbent's Marxist leanings.

Ferrell applies his oblivious blowhard shtick to what’s essentially a John Edwards parody (infidelity included). Meanwhile, Galifianakis channels an effeminate manner and lilt that’s a dead ringer for character actor Leslie Jordan. Yet, as the candidates’ tricks become dirtier, so does the film’s content. The ceaseless profanity has little purpose other than to explore the reaches of an R rating. Every woman in sight is a whore or gold digger. And you don’t have to be a red stater to be put off by a gag that conflates sexual innuendo with a line from “the Lord’s Prayer.”

Despite with a svelte 85-minute running time, the by-the-numbers plot peters out even before it segues into a contrived climax. Any movie that pads screen time with cable news talking heads playing themselves is already out of things to say—seriously, have Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer qualified for SAG cards?

Ferrell and Galifianakis’ outsized personalities, as well as the only known instance in cinematic history of both a baby and dog being punched in the face, can sustain the film only so far. Indeed, the real-life political dots are far more fascinating to connect than any on screen. Otherwise, when it comes to The Campaign, to borrow Marty’s slogan appraising the current state of politics in Washington, D.C., it’s a mess.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com

Everything Must Go

That Deangelo-Office stint didn't go so well

Grade: B

Director: Dan Rush

Starring: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern, Michael Pena, Stephen Root, and Christopher Jordan Wallace

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.

The first five minutes of Everything Must Go are very bad for Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell). He gets fired from the company he’s worked at for 16 years, has his car repossessed, and returns to his suburban Phoenix, Az. home to find that his wife has left him, but not before strewing his belonging across the front yard, changing the locks to the house, freezing their bank accounts, and cancelling Nick’s cell phone service.

Alone and adrift, Nick settles into the recliner situated on his lawn and, with a fridge full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, imbibes the alcoholism that caused this adversity in the first place. City ordinances and complaining neighbors soon convert camping outside into a yard sale, an obvious metaphor for Nick finally unloading his past. Vinyl records recall memories of Nick’s drunk, deejay dad; a yearbook reminds him of an old classmate (Laura Dern) he decides to visit; a projector allows him to revisit old home movies.

We learn more about both Nick’s flaws and dormant heart thanks to two strangers who wander into his orbit. In an example of art imitating life, a terrific Christopher Jordan Wallace, the 14-year-old son of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G., plays a fatherless youngster who mirrors Nick’s expressionless melancholy as he bikes throughout the neighborhood looking for someone to just teach him how to play baseball.

And, across the street is a new pregnant neighbor, Samantha (Rebecca Hall), whose absent career husband portends a woman experiencing the same early woes that eventually plagued Nick’s wife (whom we wisely never see).

Directed and adapted by Dan Rush from a Raymond Carver short story, Everything Must Go is at times too minimalist for its own good, and the storyline progresses to a predictable end despite its the semi-surreal setup.

But, the film works on two particular levels. First, it is an earnest fable about a man who must confront and let go of his past in order to embark on a better future. Ferrell dials back his normal oafish shtick in favor of the low-key humorous persona he used in Stranger Than Fiction.

Second, there’s a commentary about the artificiality of suburbia, in which denizens suffer the same problems as everyone else but craft covenants and regulations intended to wall away life’s ugliness, even the peculiarity of a man living with his own stuff on his own lawn. Everything bad, indiscreet, or just unusual must go…out of sight and mind.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/UdY4t

The Other Guys

Either jump or don't jump...my chocolate mint is melting

Grade: B

Director: Adam McKay

Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, and Steve Googan

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

If nothing else, The Other Guys demonstrates how Will Ferrell can perpetuate his comedic film career. His character, NYPD desk-jockey Allen Gamble, is a milquetoast variant of Ferrell’s typical buffoonish man-child, sans the conflated pomposity and loutishness that fueled roles in Anchorman and (the overrated) Talladega Nights but had grown increasingly irksome in the lackluster Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, and Step Brothers.

To wit, Allen is a schmo who takes a job as a police forensic accountant and wiles away his days filing paperwork because it is the farthest thing from his previous job as a college campus pimp named “Gator.” He takes illogical pains to downplay the patent, stunning beauty of his physician wife (Eva Mendes). He drives a red Prius and cranks Little River Band to get his adventurous juices flowing.

Indeed, riffing on tropes is the overarching theme of The Other Guys, which opens with the Wile E. Coyote, pseudo-heroics of two shades-and-leather-coat-wearing, muscle car-driving bad boy supercops, portrayed terrifically by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson (prequel, please?). On the other side of the squad room are Allen and his partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), a hothead who was busted down to desk-duty after an unfortunate incident that earned him the nickname “Yankee Clipper.”

Allen and Terry soon set out to earn their piece of precinct cred by cracking an elaborate white-collar caper hatched by Wall St. jillionaire David Ershon (Steve Googan). Hamstringing them throughout is crippling social ineptitude, Terry’s active distain for his partner, and the stock irascible police captain (Michael Keaton), albeit one who moonlights as a manager at Ben Bath & Beyond and harbors an unwitting penchant for quoting lyrics from TLC songs.

Yes, this is the buddy-cop spoof that Cop Out wanted to be. Director and longtime Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay knows how to strike just the right absurdist chord, blending a panoply of explosions and car crashes – and a gunfight that is a sly homage to John Woo – with scenes like an extended monologue in which Allen explains why tuna would win a war against lions (it’s as funny as it sounds). If Ferrell is playing partly against type, then Wahlberg falls headlong into it, riffing on his Oscar-nominated role from The Departed. And, there’s subtle satire in casting corporate villains instead of the stereotypical drugs-and-thugs sort, although the film unsuccessfully strains for import when it litters the closing credits with sundry real-life statistics about corporate greed and the widening wealth gap.

The laffs wane towards the end of The Other Guys, devolving into a series of callbacks to earlier gags – the film could have easily been trimmed by about 15 minutes – that keep it from reaching rarified Naked Gun air. Ferrell and Co. work best when they leave the arena of parody and embrace the bizarre, like Ferrell and Mendes’s dinner-table crooning of a ballad named “Pimps Don’t Cry” or Allen plowing through crime scene cadavers, coating his Prius in a sheet of cocaine in the process. Mindless comedy is rarely this knowing.

Neil Morris

Land of the Lost

The Monster Montage

Grade: C -

Director: Brad Silberling

Starring: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, and Jorma Toccone

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Will Ferrell has perfected (and earned a healthy living as) the obliviously punch-drunk oaf, but there is not another gear in his comedic transmission. Instead, Ferrell plows ahead, forcing his films’ milieus to adapt to him rather than the other way around. If time travel were actually possible, he would be the worst sort of wayfarer.

It is the audience, however, that gets taken for a ride en route to the Land of the Lost. The Krofft Brothers’ 1970s cult classic television series is the latest victim of a Hollywood, big-screen parody, à la Starsky & Hutch and The Brady Bunch. But, as was the case with The Dukes of Hazzard movie, it is difficult to mine satire out of already-kitschy source material. The stop motion animation and latex rubber suits worn by the lizard-like Sleestak in the original series were both imaginative and charmingly cheesy. CGI technology has improved the special effects, but save a few action sequences involving a marauding T-Rex named Grumpy, director Brad Silberling somehow manages to make a feature film that feels constructed on a smaller scale than its TV precursor.

Disgraced paleontologist Rick Marshall (Ferrell) cobbles together a gizmo that is part tachyon amplifier, part boom-box blasting away the soundtrack to A Chorus Line (why and how this occurs is never addressed). When his musical thingamabob conjures a space-time vortex, Rick, his eye-candy research assistant, Holly (Anna Friel), and a white-trash survivalist/tourist trap guide named Will (Danny McBride) find themselves flung into an alternate nether-dimension populated by strange creatures and littered with historical and pop-culture artifacts from our world – a Bob’s Big Boy here, a Cadillac Ranch there. More than a waypoint for wayward adventurers, this lost world is nostalgia’s graveyard.

Sadly, the interment includes any sense of discovery or humor. Ferrell and McBride muster a hipster-doofus byplay that staves off many comic dead spots. And, I expelled more than a couple of chuckles during off-kilter jabs at everything from the Latin Grammys to Harry and the Hendersons. But, most of the botched laughs are the chronic glut of poop and urine gags, while the time travelers’ pet primate-cum-Sherpa, Chaka (Jorma Taccone), specializes in intoxicating his human masters whilst groping their private parts.

With an inane screenplay more befitting something retrieved from lost & found, Land of the Lost is charmless and, worst of all, just plain inconsequential. Squint hard at that wasteland of pop relics, and soon you might see the rapidly-diminishing remnants of Will Ferrell’s career.

Neil Morris

Step Brothers

Does anyone know the way to the Razzies?

Grade: C –
Director: Adam McKay Starring: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins, and Adam Scott
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

The essence of any good satire is its underpinning of truth. Last February, during a press junket in Chapel Hill, Will Ferrell took a few moments to forecast his then-upcoming film, Step Brothers, about two 40-year-old dolts still living at home with single parents who then get married, forcing the two men-children to become stepbrothers. “It's different in that it's not based on broad, over-the-top characters…It’s pretty grounded,” said Ferrell. “[The film] is our little way of saying that there are certain people out there who have a kind of righteous indignation. We all know people who say, ‘As soon as I get my welding degree, I'm going to get a job, but I'm NOT going to do that until I get my car fixed.’ We all have characters who are like that in our lives, so that's what we're playing around with there.”

Regrettably, Ferrell’s otherwise cogent assessment of Step Brothers’ underlying truth belies the woeful finished film product. Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (John C. Reilly) are exactly over-the-top characters who live in a state of such arrested development that they are utterly divorced from reality. The same goes for their long-suffering parents, Brennan’s mom Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale’s dad Bob (Richard Jenkins), who tolerate and even enable their emotionally retarded sons to an unhealthy degree.

But, why so serious? After, this is not only a Will Ferrell vehicle, but also the latest biweekly Judd Apatow production. However, without a viable satirical element, all the film leaves us is the quality of its gags. Unfortunately, they do not rise above the level of a post-Weekend Update Saturday Night Live sketch. Brennan and Dale waste their (and our) time hurling invectives at each other, most of them comprising a cacophony of F-bombs and scatology that lack any creativity or originality. The “plot,” using that term loosely, just sits there like a rickety edifice barely propping up Ferrell and Reilly’s aimless adlibbing.

A few scattershots, principally Reilly’s, hit their mark: Dale praises Brennan’s inexplicably lauded singing voice as “a combination of Fergie and Jesus”; during a job interview, Dale makes clear that he does not want any work that requires “sex with older women or bear traps” – “Those are my 2 bugaboos,” Reilly deadpans. Otherwise, there is not a redeemable character in the entire dysfunctional mess, including Brennan’s financially successful, douch bag of a younger brother, Derek (Adam Scott). Anytime there is the slightest lull in the action, someone tosses out some variation of “What the fuck?!” – even Steenburgen gets in on the act at one point.

This is Ferrell’s second consecutive R-rated comedy, and, notwithstanding his memorable turn in Old School, he does not wear them well. The lax content restrictions allow Ferrell to choose lazy shock humor – e.g., rubbing his testicles on Dale’s drum set (yes, you read that correctly) – instead of fashioning something more imaginative. We get a glimpse of the latter during the film’s climax, when Ferrell channels Andrea Bocelli with a rendition of “Con te partiró.” Throughout the rest of Step Brothers, you will just find yourself wondering when it’s “time to say goodbye.”

Neil Morris

Semi-Pro

White Men Can't Jump 2

Grade: C +
Director: Kent Alterman
Starring: Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, André Benjamin, Maura Tierney, Will Arnett, Andy Richter, David Koechner, and Rob Corddry
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

At his current pace, it is only a matter of years before Will Ferrell, and Hollywood in general, mines the entire wide world of sports for satirical ore—can parodies of Jai alai and Australian Rules Football be far behind? Unfortunately, the only semi-original aspect about Semi-Pro, Ferrell’s onerous ode to the latter days of the American Basketball Association (ABA), is the conspicuous fact that it is the first R-rated Ferrell-starring vehicle since Old School, a change undoubtedly fueled more by Apatow emulation than creative inspiration.

Like Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights before it, Semi-Pro's premise is far funnier than its presentation. Set in the swingin’ mid-1970s, Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, a faded one-hit-pop wonder who parlays royalties from his lone chart-topper, “Love Me Sexy,” into purchasing the fictional Flint Michigan Tropics. Jackie whiles away his days as owner-coach-player-PA announcer for the fledging franchise. When the league announces plans to merge four teams into the NBA and disband the rest, Jackie faces the double-whammy of having to win plus attract fans in order to save his team.

There is lots of red meat here for the Ferrell fan base, even if he continues to spend most scenes rambling on in search of a punch line. Ferrell wisely shares the limelight with his supporting cast, including Andre Benjamin as star guard Clarence ‘Coffee’ Black and Woody Harrelson as a washed-up ex-NBAer looking for one last chance at redemption. On the other hand, there is a lot of B-list talent relegated to C-list roles – take a bathroom break and you are liable to miss anything substantive from Tim Meadows, David Koechner, and Andy Richter (still in search of any good role).

Beyond the setup, however, the jokes are as musty as a gym locker. Writer Scot Armstrong, whose last two screenplay credits are The Heartbreak Kid and School for Scoundrels, runs out of ideas less than halfway through, leaving a void that Ferrell constantly fills with his trademark paunchy, punch-drunk lout persona. Bits involving wrestling a bear and skate-jumping bikini-clad cheerleaders stick out like sore thumbs – and are just about as funny – while subplots like Harrelson’s dalliance with the married Maura Tierney should have accompanied by crickets chirping. A few guffaws float to the top, most of them generated by Will Arnett and Andrew Daly as the Tropics’ tightly wound TV announcing team.

The rest of Semi-Pro reflects the gist of its title. Ferrell and Co. go for a slam dunk but instead end up shooting an air ball. But, don’t worry – I hear curling is pretty darn funny.

Neil Morris

Will Ferrell Interview - February 22, 2008, Chapel Hill, NC

by Neil Morris

Will Ferrell, with Semi-Pro director Kent Alterman

The dual purposes for Will Ferrell’s presence in Chapel Hill, NC on Friday, February 22, 2008 were the last leg of his nationwide Funny or Die campus comedy tour and promoting Semi-Pro, being released in theaters on February 29. I was part of a press contingent who sat down with the famous comedian to discuss a variety of topics, beginning with the genesis of the Funny or Die tour:

Ferrell: “We thought of the tour last August as a way promote the Funny or Die website as well as Semi-Pro and get both the website and movie studio to pay for it. It wasn't anything I've ever done before, but it seemed like a fun thing to get up on stage and think of some crazy reason to travel to a lot of colleges that wouldn't normally get (to host) something like this.”

On the heels of Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory, and Kicking and Screaming, Semi-Pro is Ferrell’s fourth sports-related comedy, which Ferrell claims is sheer coincidence:

Ferrell: “That's been a line of questioning I’ve gotten a lot – whether I'm obsessed with sports comedies, and I'm not. They're fun to do, but I don't have this list of 80 sports-related movies I'd like to do. The movie is really a parody of this insane league, the ABA (American Basketball Association), which a lot of people don't realize was actually a league, and it's not a movie about playing bad basketball. When the ABA ended in 1976, I was nine-year-old and kicking ass in the third grade, so I wasn’t really aware of the league until my adult life when reading about it and collecting information. But, when you read accounts of the ABA, you can't believe the stories and that it survived for 9 years. It was behind the 8-ball the entire time, but it had a larger-than-life cast of characters and personalities that drove that thing, and that's kind of what we're parodying.”

Ferrell’s recent career has followed a familiar trend for many film comedians, mixing his trademark brand of madcap humor with more dramatic roles such movies as Stranger Than Fiction and Winter Passing. But, according to Ferrell, his career is not “confined to any master blueprint”:

Ferrell: “I obviously have a number of things I'm developing, some slightly more dramatic and others are out-and-out comedies. But, I love those two experiences, especially Stranger than Fiction – I'd love to do more films like that. But, I never want to be guilty of forcing that issue because I want everything to feel like it fits. I'm definitely not the comedian who has the agenda of, ‘Please, I'm begging you to take me seriously.’ It's so much fun to do dramas and other types of movies and take on those challenges, but I love doing comedy, too.”

On working with his longtime collaborator, Adam McKay, with whom Ferrell cowrote the screenplays for Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and the upcoming Step Brothers:

Ferrell: “We kind of hit it off on Saturday Night Live, where we first got hired together. We just share the same sensibilities, we tend to think the same things are funny, and we like working in the same style. Even if it's a crazy idea, we're like, ‘Great, write that down.’ We like to work fast and messy and clean it all up later. We found at SNL that we loved to write sketches as fast as we could. We would take about an hour where a lot of people would toil all night long on one sketch, and we could never figure out why. Whether we work 8 hours or 1 hours on a sketch, they all came out about the same. What's unique about us is that a lot of times we can't remember who came with an idea. We never say, ‘No, I thought of that.’ Usually, we say, ‘I think it was Adam,’ or ‘No, I think it was Will.’ We are very egoless in the way we work.”

Due for release this July, Step Brothers costars Ferrell and John C. Reilly:

Ferrell: “It's different in that it's not based on broad, over-the-top characters. It's pretty grounded, or at least as grounded as Adam & I can get. It's about family life: two 40-year-old guys who still live at home whose single parents then get married so we have to become stepbrothers. So, in that regard, both characters refuse to get jobs and have a list of excuses why they don't feel motivated. It's our little way of saying that there are certain people out there who have that kind of righteous indignation. We all know people who say, ‘As soon as I get my welding degree, I'm going to get a job, but I'm NOT going to do that until I get my car fixed.’ We all have characters who are like that in our lives, so that's what we're playing around with there.”

Who would win a pickup basketball game between Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, and André Benjamin, his Semi-Pro costars?

Ferrell: “Well, I would, because I have great fundamentals, and that's what wins games ultimately…I would think.”