Semi-Pro is what happens when the same 15 people make every major comedy for several years. It’s like that guy who has that one really good, very involved “story” joke. The first time you hear it you nearly choke from laughter. The second or third time, you pay more attention to the beats and laugh anew. The fourth and fifth time, it’s still funny to see people who are new to the joke laugh. After that . . . Jesus, man, get a new routine.

The joke—loud and oblivious Will Ferrell stumbles his way through a quasi-sport, or some other partially ridiculous profession—has been told many times now, with occasional efforts to spice up the visuals with anachronistic settings (It’s the 70’s! Look at those ties!) for extra flair. The diminishing returns are obvious: Anchorman is objectively great, Talladega Nights was a little worn but still possessed great moments, and Blades of Glory was like a cash-grab reunion tour. Balls of Fury and Dodgeball, though created by mostly different folks, only added to the deluge of silly sports movies. By now, the standard reaction to the description of a new Will Ferrell movie is “another one?”

Semi-Pro is indeed “another one.” Will Ferrell is Jackie Moon, one-hit-wonder disco sensation and owner and player for his American Basketball Association team, the Flint Tropics. Yes, that’s Flint, Michigan, grim industrial wasteland from Michael Moore’s documentary Roger and Me. Jackie’s team is actively terrible, but that doesn’t bother him so much. As long as he gets to do zany promotions and go about town as the owner of the basketball team, he’s just fine.

But many of the other ABA teams are doing terribly as well, and the fans have noticed. The NBA wants to buy out the league, and only four teams will get to keep their identity. The Tropics aren’t one of them. The NBA has chosen the four teams, but Jackie rallies and counters: The four best teams should be the ones to join. The other owners agree.

The problem is, the Tropics are dead last. So Jackie brings in a washed-out NBA player (Woody Harrelson) to shape the team up and maybe cultivate the one truly talented player on the team, Clarence Black (André Benjamin). It’s Harrelson’s job to play the straight man, and there are long, joyless segments of Semi-Pro where we revisit the hoariest of sports movie clichés out of some subconscious need to fulfill them. It’s weird to see ostensible satirists beholden to what they’re satirizing.

The movie does have one new thing going for it: Whereas Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Blades of Glory were rated PG-13, Semi-Pro is R. It is paradoxically both more and less “adult” in its humor, though it is refreshing to see PG-13 mavens like Ferrell and Tim Meadows pass off casual obscenities around a game of poker. There’s a certain edge to that scene in particular (or another, quite memorable one involving Rob Corddry) that’s missing in a lot of other places; it ends up feeling like an island in an ocean of sameness.

Which is not to say I didn’t laugh. I did. Will Ferrell, Will Arnett, Andy Richter, David Koechner, and (when the script allows it) Woody Harrelson are all very funny people. Jackie’s increasingly crazier promotion tactics provide the needed beats to inject some random craziness and start up a few recurring jokes. But these guys, along with Judd Apatow’s crew, have had the microphone for a little too long now. We know them, we know what kind of humor they produce, and we know how they do it. The novelty is gone. It’s time for some new jokes.