Ah, the fabled Saturday Night Live curse.  It's a tricksy one to figure out.  Pretty much the entire original cast emerged unscathed, as did Eddie Murphy - though Eddie seems to have been struck by it late in his career, the curse having grown to simply massive proportions as if to make up for lost time.  Of recent casts, though, only three have made it to the big screen in any sort of significant way.  Mike Meyers is the only one of the entire crew to ever successfully expand a sketch character out to feature length and has fluorished since by creating characters that, you know, don't suck.  Though I'm thinking that The Love Guru pretty much will.  Adam Sandler got over a shaky start by realizing he could play the mildly retarded underdog with aplomb only to throw away his box office clout by replacing his funny mildly retarded underdog with a serious mildly retarded underdog  (should I be apologizing here for making light of the issues raised by this movie or should Sandler be apologizing for being involved in such a shit-poor treatment of said issues?) and then there's Will Ferrell.

Now, the temptation is to say that Ferrell is successful because he's one of the rare few SNL alum who are actually talented on the acting front, joining by my count only Bill Murray and Robert Downey Jr. - whose stint on the show was brief enough that I feel kind of bad including him here - as SNL vets who found success because they're actually bloody good at what they do and good enough that they can do rather a lot of different things.  But the box office disagrees.  When Ferrell gets critical acclaim, the films tank.  The magic ingredient, boys and girls, is clearly the hair.  The more there is, the greater the take.

Look at the evidence.  Anchorman had full, seventies locks and a huge box office haul.  His next film, Melinda and Melinda, won Ferrell lots of critical love but his hair was short so it tanked.  Kicking and Screaming?  Moderate fro, moderate take.  Bewitched?  Short hair, big time flop.  Talladega Nights?  Fro came back, so did the money.  Stranger Than Fiction?  Lots of critical love, big hit at the Toronto Film Festival, but the hair just wasn't there and neither was the audience.

And now here comes Semi Pro.  It's taking a major critical drubbing, but god damn!  Look at that hair!  Sure to make a mint.  And then what?  How long before the hair realizes what's up and gets an agent of its own.  Mark my words, Ferrell himself is becoming redundant.  Some time soon the hair will be starring solo.