Will Ferrell is No Iceman or Dr. J

I think Will Ferrell is funny, but I am starting to get a little sick of his standard shtick. The last movie of his that I thought was really funny was Anchorman. Every movie he has been in since then (with the exception of stranger than fiction) usually has him playing the exact same type of character. He's still funny, and there are still parts of his movies that make me howl in the theater (like when he stabs himself in Talladega Nights), but I feel I know the formula and therefore I am fine waiting for his movies to come out on DVD before I see them.

Semi-Pro might be different. Kent Ackerman apparently did a lot of work to make the movie look and feel authentic, and I appreciate that. I absolutely LOVE the ABA even though I was born several years after the league was absorbed by the NBA. I was really lucky that my dad loved basketball so much, so I got to hear stories of Dr. J and George Gervin. I practiced my free throws and layups when I went to the court, but I would always find time to work on a little finger roll. You could imagine how ecstatic I was when Nike came out with a series of commercials around 2002 that featured an ABA theme and lots of funk:

Now that's amazing. I love the shots of them getting off the bus. I really need a suit like Jermaine O'Neal (about 50 seconds into the video above). The Dr. Funk commerical was OK, but it just got better from there:

Wow. George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and the rest of the P-Funk all stars. And if I am wearing Jermaine O'Neal's suit, my honey should be wearing Lisa Leslie's dress (51 seconds in). I am seriously beginning to wonder whether Nike should A) Sue Newline for stealing their concept and thinking people would be fooled by using pasty white guys or B) Get Bow Wow and all his friends from Roll Bounce together to make their own movie. Now THAT would be a movie I would watch. Maybe I should get started on the screenplay.