Will Ferrell: Funny . . . At Any Age

"I don't seem 40, do I?"

This, from 40-year-old Will Ferrell, is the comedian's equivalent of a girlfriend asking if she looks fat in these pants. There is only one right answer, and that is no, not at all.

"Okay, good. Phew."

Ferrell is a comedian whose brand of crude slapstick humor appeals more to the college generation than to its parents. Running naked down a street? Good. A cursing toddler? Hilarious. Dry heaving vomit jokes? Essential. Crashing a funeral to pick up chicks? Gut-bustingly funny.

"I have kind of the appearance of a guy who just wouldn't say or do those things, so that becomes fun to watch," Ferrell says during a phone interview from Chicago. "I think that age group kind of appreciates that I am not really fearful of anything."

If Ferrell's newest movie, "Semi-Pro," proves something, it is that he definitely isn't afraid of anything, including the shortest of shorts.

In the film, set in the 1970s, Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, a pop singer who made it big and decided to become a player-owner-coach of the nearly defunct American Basketball Association team in Flint, Mich. After finding out that only the top four teams will be absorbed into the NBA at the end of the season and that attendance matters, he tries a variety of attention-grabbing gimmicks (free corn dog night, jumping over the cheerleaders on a pair of roller skates, wrestling a bear), all of which backfire horribly but bring in crowds. He also trades a washing machine for Monix (Woody Harrelson), a washed-up former NBA player, who injects an element of seriousness into the story. Ferrell says that seriousness was patterned after the 1977 ice hockey comedy "Slap Shot."

"Our director, Kent Alterman, he really wanted to get a flavor of that," Ferrell says. "When you think back to that film, it is obviously broad and funny, but it was really gritty and real at times, and it went in and out of the very serious relationship story."

Never mind that "Slap Shot" was made long before many of Ferrell's fans were born or that the ABA has been gone for more than 30 years. Ferrell trusts that the same audience that enjoyed his roles as an underdog in his last three sports-themed movies, "Blades of Glory," "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and "Kicking & Screaming," will come out for "Semi-Pro."

"I think it is kind of a guilty pleasure for the audience to kind of go along on this ride and follow this lovable band of misfits," Ferrell says. "The final game isn't for the championship, it is for fourth place, which is really kind of sweet and delightfully pathetic all at the same time. There are endearing qualities that . . . are different -- it's not just a raucous comedy."

Not that there's anything wrong with that. For those in need of a comedy fix, Ferrell offers the Web site http://www.funnyordie.com, which he dubs a "comedy YouTube, if you will." The site has such Ferrell gems as the memorable short "The Landlord" as well as clips featuring emerging comedians. To publicize the site and the new movie, Ferrell wrapped up an eight-show comedy tour Sunday in New York. The tour hit colleges across the country and sold out every show, with crowds ranging from 7,000 to 15,000.

Not too bad for a 40-year-old.