Will Ferrell, center, and Woody Harrelson, left, star as players trying to rescue their underdog team from oblivion, by any means necessary, in Semi-Pro.

New Line Cinema

Will Ferrell again tackles his patented, crowd-pleasing, larger-than-life child-man in Semi-Pro, this time playing the coach and star forward of a basketball team that’s on the skids.

It’s a role Ferrell has played before, most recently in the hits Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, two of his most successful films. There’s really nothing new in the familiar underdog plot of Semi-Pro, in which Ferrell’s Jackie Moon tries to propel his losing Flint Tropics into winning enough games and attracting enough customers to get his team one of four berths that will open up in the newly expanded NBA, which is about to swallow up Jackie’s own ABA organization. Nevertheless, it’s a role Ferrell plays well in his anything-goes style, whether he’s boxing a bear or pumping out Jackie’s singing of “Love Me Sexy,” a song he had turned into a hit a long, long time ago.

Jackie is prone to sudden outbursts and tantrums, which, along with the offbeat touches and plot surprises, keep Semi-Pro bouncing merrily around the basketball court.

Like Ferrell’s Ricky Bobby, Jackie is a legend in his own mind. He’s oblivious to the fact that there are fewer than 100 people in the stands at one of the Flint Tropics games, even as he tries to build momentum by crooning “Love Me Sexy” or offering a $10,000 check to anyone from the stands who can make a basket from across the court. The fact that he doesn’t have $10,000 for a payoff doesn’t occur to Jackie, who never expected one of the fans to be able to accomplish the feat.

When he discovers that his team is scheduled to be shut down after the NBA takes over, Jackie goes on the offensive, convincing his dying league that the four winningest ABA teams should be the ones to get NBA berths and that he’s determined the Flint Tropics will be one of them. His ace in the hole is newly signed Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson), an NBA bad boy who has bounced from team to team because of his unruly behavior, yet has managed to land on enough championship teams to be something of a legend himself (even though Harrelson is rather short).

But Jackie thinks he can get his team to pull together under his motto of “Everybody love everybody.” That, he believes, will be enough to surmount incredible odds in putting together a winning 1976 season for the Tropics (a misnamed team in snowy Flint, Mich.) and get at least 2,000 people to show up at every game, something the league demands.

Director Kent Alterman has staged several hilarious moments from Scot Armstrong’s funny script. Zanily nerve-racking is a sequence revolving around an “unloaded” gun, a moment that’s made even funnier because the audience is way ahead of the characters on screen, who are passing the pistol around a card table, firing it at each other. There’s also that boxing bear, which isn’t quite as tame as it’s portrayed to be; a sequence in which Jackie does an Evel Knievel-style jump over eight cheerleaders lying head-to-toe on the basketball court; and a scene in which Jackie tries to block his own teammates from scoring too many points. If they reach a certain score, Jackie has promised free corn dogs to everyone in the arena . . . and he doesn’t have the money to pay for them.

Ferrell’s infantile behavior has scored with teens and young adults, and it’s easy to see why in his outrageous antics as Jackie Moon. Harrelson is the even keel to Ferrell’s manic delivery, while Andrew Daly scores as Dick Pepperfield, the team’s sports announcer who keeps his cool as he says the most unlikely things about the zaniness going on around him.

*** 1/2Semi-Pro

Starring: Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Will Arnett, André Benjamin, Rob Corddry, Maura Tierney, Andrew Daly, Josh Braaten, DeRay Davis, Jay Phillips, Jackie Earle Haley, Andy Richter.

Rated: R, contains violence, profanity, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com