courtesy of New Line Cinema Woody Harrelson as Monix (left) and Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon in “Semi-Pro.”

During the opening credits of "Semi-Pro," Will Ferrell's newest sports comedy, Ferrell sings a love ballad to a basketball stadium audience in which he implores the listeners, among other things, "love me sexy." It's quite clever, but as the film begins, viewers see that the stadium is nearly empty.

It's a well-played jab at the advertising culture surrounding professional sports and the willingness of some teams, players and owners to go above and beyond the silly just to try to sell tickets.

It's a shame that the film never lives up to this opener.

Ferrell is Jackie Moon, the owner, coach and player of the Flint, Mich. Tropics, an underdog team in the American Basketball Association (ABA), hungering for a chance to join the NBA. When it is announced that the ABA and the NBA will be merging, the team finds out it can only continue playing together if it makes it into the top four by the end of the season.

It's up to Moon to inspire them all to victory with the help of new teammate Monix, a former NBA player, played by Woody Harrelson.

Predictably, Monix doesn't exactly hit it off with the team, as one player in particular (Clarence "Coffee" Black played by Andre Benjamin), accuses him of being nothing more than a benchwarmer. The team must struggle through their differences to pull ahead.

This is the template for any basic inspirational sports movie, and though "Semi-Pro" seems willing to lampoon many of the conventions surrounding basketball itself, it hardly ever comes close to making fun of this film genre, which is odd, considering that even the simplistic "Blades of Glory" managed to skewer professional figure skating effectively.

It ends up feeling like a wasted opportunity.

The cast is part of the problem. Ferrell is on auto-pilot as Jackie Moon. Too much of his character seems like it's coming from previous roles such as Ricky Bobby in "Talladega Nights."

Harrelson never gets any laughs, and for the most part does a good impression of a block of wood.

Benjamin is a likeable enough guy as Coffee and he gets more laughs than Harrelson, but his central struggle is too artificially constructed to really resonate.

Of course, Monix and Coffee become close friends and learn to accept each other's differences as a central part of the plot.

The only two members of the cast who are consistently enjoyable are Will Arnett and Andrew Daly, who play Tropics announcers Lou Redwood and Dick Pepperfield. Their comedic timing is always perfect, and they deliver the funniest lines of the movie.

"I should've brought more scotch," Redwood says in one scene where the Tropics are losing badly.

It's also kind of odd that the film is rated "R." It drops a few four-letter words here and there, but the rating is never even taken advantage of.

At one point, Monix tries to teach Moon how to throw up because Moon has never puked in his life. In a movie that's rated "R" for things such as crude humor, you would think it would at least show the puke more clearly, but it cuts to a different scene just as it is happening. If you're going to make an R-rated film, make one that goes all the way and doesn't just act big and brave by throwing the words around.

The film does have several moments of much-needed hilarity, such as a scene where Moon fights a bear to bring 2,000 people into the stadium, or one in which he teaches his team a dance routine while each player is dressed in a sea creature outfit made out of foam. But these don't come often enough, and the characters are too one-dimensional and poorly acted for viewers to care about whether or not they'll end up making it into the NBA.

Will Ferrell fans will derive a good amount of chuckles from Ferrell doing his usual shtick, but chuckles aren't anything to be proud of when the film consistently tries to shoot three-pointer guffaws and consistently misses.

Hopefully, Ferrell will take the hint and stop making these increasingly poor sports movies.

Plot: C-
Acting: B-
Comedy: C
Overall: C