Another month, another opportunity for Will Ferrell to trot out another of his egotistical idiots, dress in silly costumes, hit people, and shout at the top of his voice in another tiresome display of improvisation without inspiration.

Joining Ron Burgundy and Ricky Bobby in his inexhaustible (yet thoroughly exhausted) line of loud-mouths is Jackie Moon, a one-hit wonder whose soul ditty ‘Love Me Sexy’ allowed him to buy a basketball team: the Flint (Michigan) Tropics.

(The joke here is that there is nothing remotely tropical about Flint, Michigan. It’s a dreary industrial town which produced lots of cars and dumpy documentarian Michael Moore.)

With Jackie conducting affairs on court and off, the Tropics sit at the bottom of the ABA (once a real league) with no fans, no money and only one decent player, Clarence (Benjamin) - and he don’t care.

The bad news is that only the top four teams will make the cut when the ABA is absorbed into the mighty NBA at end of the 1976 season. To Jackie’s horror, the rest will be dissolved.

And so the underdog story begins, with Jackie trying to stop the rot by drafting an NBA has-been (Harrelson) in exchange for a washing machine, and pulling out every promotional stop to bring back the crowds.

But this isn’t simply a rip-off of Dodgeball. No, it cannibalises all Ferrell’s previous comedies too, from the coaching tantrums of Kicking and Screaming to the Seventies-mocking and bear-wrestling of Anchorman.

No joke remains unflogged, however bad. The Lithuanian guy can’t speak English! Hoho. Jackie’s mum’s black! Er, ho. And he mispronounced “annals”! Ho-hum. Look - now he’s running in circles and shouting again! Oh, sit down and shut up.

According to the Ferrell method, the art of comedy characterisation is to put on a straight face (daft hairstyle optional), bellow the first thing that comes to mind (rude words optional), race around like a child on a sugar rush… and repeat.

And repeat. AND REPEAT!

Even he tires of it by the final quarter, ending a painfully unfunny pep talk by walking out of the scene with a lame “I don’t know what I’m saying.” It’s indicative of the film’s sheer laziness that they left the scene in.

One potentially good gag involving a prank round of Russian roulette is wasted and the only amusing lines are delivered by Will Arnett and Andrew Daly’s chalk-and-cheese courtside commentators – again, done previously in Best In Show.

At least Harrelson and ER star Maura Tierney (as his redundant love interest) have the decency to look ashamed of themselves.

Melinda and Melinda and Stranger Than Fiction prove that Ferrell has real talent when he sticks to a (decent) script. But Semi-Pro is more wearying than fifty laps of the multiplex.

We all need a time-out from dross like this.

Elliott Noble