Cast: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Dian Bachar, Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy, Robert Vaughn, Ernest Borgnine
Director: David Zucker
Producers: David Zucker, Robert LoCash, Gil Netter
Screenplay: David Zucker, Robert LoCash, Lewis Friedman, and Jeff Wright
Cinematography: Steve Mason
Music: James Ira Newborn
U.S. Distributor: Universal Pictures
The biggest obstacle for David Zucker's BASEketball to overcome is its release date. Not only does this sampling of dumber-than-dumb humor have to do battle with Jim Abrahams' Mafia! (Former partners Zucker and Abrahams comprised two-thirds of ZAZ, the creative team behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun), but it has the unenviable task of going head-to-head with the crude, rude, hilarious There's Something about Mary. That's one battle BASEketball cannot possibly win, for, although this sports movie spoof has its share of laughs, its best moments are only on par with Mary's worst.
BASEketball starts out promisingly enough, with a mockumentary discussing the recent commercialism of sports. We see things like a stadium named after Preparation H and a free agent player who forgets the latest team he has played for. Unfortunately, the opening is BASEketball's comic highlight, and nothing in the next one-hundred minutes comes close to it in terms of humor or originality. There are some other funny skits - the "Road Kill Caught on Tape" exploitation video (obviously a takeoff of shows like "When Animals Attack") and Robert Stack doing a profane parody of his Unsolved Mysteries TV series. Other than that, however, most of the lame comedy is as predictable as it is lowbrow. There is a storyline, although it's not very involving and there's no way it should run for as long as it does. BASEketball has fallen victim to the recent movie trend which requires that nearly every film must be at least twenty minutes longer than the material demands. The movie's final half hour, which is barren of genuinely amusing moments, is especially difficult to sit through.
Coop and Remer (played by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creative team behind the animated cable TV show, South Park) are a pair of slacker friends who invent a game called "BASEketball" (a hybrid of baseball and basketball) in a vain attempt to impress girls. While the sport utterly fails to get Coop and Remer the kind of female company they're looking for, it attracts the attention of a multi-millionaire (a slumming Ernest Borgnine) who infuses the BASEketball league with enough cash to allow it to go pro. Within five years, it has become a phenomenon, with ESPN carrying the championship game and announcers Bob Costas and Al Michaels making fools of themselves spouting inanities in the broadcast booth. But all is not well in BASEketball land. When Borgnine's benign character dies, a rival owner (Robert Vaughn), who wants to turn BASEketball into a commercial gold mine, conspires with the wealthy widow, Yvette (Jenny McCarthy), to take control of the sport. The only ones standing in their way are Coop and Remer, but both have obvious weaknesses. Remer is in love with himself, and Coop has fallen for Jenna Reed (Yasmine Bleeth), a curvaceous brunette who works for the Dream Come True Foundation, an organization that plans final wishes for terminally ill children.
When I watch a comedy, I want it either to present endearing characters in fun situations or to make me laugh frequently. BASEketball accomplishes neither objective. As manic comic personalities, Parker and Stone leave a lot to be desired. The presence of such non-talents as Bleeth and McCarthy doesn't help matters, nor does the script's reliance upon vomit and homophobic humor. (Once again, the key isn't the subject matter per se, but the fact that the jokes aren't funny.) The bottom line is, if you like least common denominator humor, There's Something about Mary offers a better diet of laughs, both in terms of quality and quantity, than BASEketball, which ends up a few runs short.
© 1998 James Berardinelli