“Semi-Pro,” Will Ferrell’s latest venture into the sports-comedy genre, comes up a little short on the comedy end.

The film, starring Ferrell, Woody Harrelson and Andre “3000” Benjamin of hip hop outfit Outkast, and helmed by first-time director Kent Alterman, will come as a major disappointment to fans of Ferrell’s previous sports comedies, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and “Blades of Glory.”

“Semi-Pro,” set in the 1970’s, follows the story of the Flint Tropics, a fictional team in the real but now defunct American Basketball Association, which is run by player/coach/owner and former pop star Jackie Moon (Ferrell). Moon’s Tropics are less than stellar, and are seen as a joke by the other teams in the league.

With attendance at an all-time low, and his team’s record on the skids, Moon is informed by the ABA commissioner (David Koechner) that the end of the season, the league will be merging with the much more lucrative National Basketball Association. He is then told that only the teams with the four best records at the end of the season will be absorbed into the NBA. With this, Moon makes it his mission for his team to succeed and to save his franchise and the underdeveloped plot of the film begins.

While a viewer obviously cannot expect highly intelligent comedy or a meaty plot out of a Ferrell comedy, it is nevertheless apparent that the plot of the film is rather lackluster and the jokes aren’t all that funny. The movie mostly follows the conventions of any mainstream sports movie, with a major problem presented in the form of the looming NBA merger, a conflicted star player in Clarence “Coffee”

Black (Benjamin) and the eventual arrival of a washed up champion, former NBA player Ed Monix (Harrelson) to unite the team and save the day.

One highlight of the film is Ferrell’s hilarious rendition of his character’s hit song “Love Me Sexy,” but the bland, unoriginal plot and overall lack of truly funny jokes make “Semi-Pro” a major step down from the hilarity of smash hit “Talledega Nights.” There are several witty jokes sprinkled throughout the movie, but most are only worth a little chuckle, and are far from the “laugh-tilyou-cry” gags of “Talladega Nights.” The one thing “Semi-Pro” has over Ferrell’s previous sports-comedies is the increased presence of foul language, but even that can only get only so many laughs.

Any die-hard Will Ferrell fan will find it hard to believe that he could make a movie that is anything less than hilarious, but after seeing the film even those fans would be forced to admit that “Semi-Pro” is nothing more than a decent comedy.