When Steve Martin was playing different kinds of wild and crazy guys in the 1970s, he was playing different absurd concepts of the wild and crazy guy, including a stylized version of himself as a white-suited stand-up with an arrow through his head.
When Will Ferrell plays wild and crazy guys in his alternate-comic universe of the '70s, whether as the preening San Diego TV anchor in Anchorman or, in Semi-Pro, daffy Jackie Moon, the owner-player-coach of the Flint, Mich., Tropics (the worst team in the American Basketball Association), he becomes a wild and crazy guy from somewhere deep in his belly, at least for the movie's running time.
When Martin got "happy feet," it was a delirious routine; part of the joke was in realizing that Martin, so incredibly graceful and limber, was doing something that flighty as a joke.
But when Ferrell's Moon wiggles his arms like a one-man stadium wave caught in a riptide, the star really becomes a man who's lost control of his limbs, and he sweeps you up in his euphoria. He operates as much from his ample gut as Martin does from his well-stocked brain, but somehow gets at the same destination of sublime silliness.
The key to Ferrell's Moon, a one-hit pop wonder who uses the profits from his smash "Love Me Sexy" to buy his own team, is a surfeit of energy that frizzes his hair and sets his eyes aglitter. His innate talent is that of an impresario. He comes up with one nutty promotional notion after another, from the mundane Corn Dog Night to a splashy floor show on the hardwoods, with himself costumed like the beaming sun on a Raisin Bran box and his players as tropical creatures, including seahorses.
Ferrell's capacity for belief in numbskull characters makes him perfect to play that one-in-a-million dreamer who took it literally when someone said, "Dream on." For Moon, it's become not just a principle but a spiritual thing, whether he's acting as a self-styled motivator to his teammates, or putting himself on the floor as a power forward whose skill level is suited for a grade-school gym class.
At the start of Semi-Pro, set in 1976, he feels that his ruling dream may be realized when the commissioner of the ABA calls the league's owners together to announce a merger with the NBA. The hitch is, the NBA won't let in every team.
But Moon can be a master persuader at any meeting: He has no emotional and mental check-and-balance system, so when he gets passionate, he's all-out. At Moon's insistence, each ABA team gets a shot at the NBA; all they have to do is finish in their own league's top four that season.
