BASEketball
“BASEketball” wasn’t the first film Matt Stone and Trey Parker made after they made it big with their animated creation, “South Park” (that was the absurd superhero spoof, “Orgazmo”), but it was the first film released. Needless to say, there were relatively high expectations that we would get a movie a rowdy and raunchy as they proved to be on “South Park.” Unfortunately, the film came out a couple of weeks after the smash “There’s Something About Mary,” the film landed with a thud for most people.
That’s a shame, because the “South Park” boys, and co-writer and director David Zucker (“The Naked Gun,” “Airplane”), have some fun making fun of the modern sports world. This is especially true in the opening sequence, where Zucker and his co-writers (Robert LoCash, Lewis Freidman, and Jeff Wright) poke fun at everything from excessive celebration (actually a penalized offense in football now) to teams and players moving for the sake of profit to the absurd playoff scenarios that take place every year. In this atmosphere, Joe Cooper (Parker) and Doug Remer (Stone) create BASEketball, a game combining the rules of baseball and basketball in their driveway that takes the world by storm. One day, a billionaire named Denslow (the late Ernest Borgnine) wants to take the game pro, and five years later, it’s a huge success. But when Denslow dies, and leaves Cooper the team, everything pure about the game seems ready to unravel when petty differences threaten to turn these friends against each other.
The truth is, Parker, Stone, and Zucker have all done better, sharper work. As stars, Parker and Stone are enjoyable, but don’t work quite as well in front of the camera as they do behind it when they’re making films like “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” and “Team America: World Police.” Thankfully, they aren’t asked to do much, and they’ve got an unlikely secret weapon in buddy Dian Bacher as they’re put-upon friend Kenny “Squeak” Scolari that helps keep things moving at a brisk, hilarious pace. And this movie is hilarious, especially if you’re a sucker for sports movies like I am, and understand all the cliches and story beats that those films always seem to pull out, right down the heroic music (spoofed effortlessly by Zucker’s go to composer, Ira Newborn). If you don’t, or are expecting something like the uncompromising satire of “South Park,” trust me when I say you’ll be disappointed. This is just a crazy little spoof movie, with cameos by sports icons and roles for people like Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy, and Robert Vaughn, and honestly, that’s good enough for me.
