# BASEketball (1998)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

BASEKETBALL (Universal) Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Yasmine Bleeth, Robert Vaughn, Dian Bachar, Jenny McCarthy. Screenplay: David Zucker, Robert LoCash, Lewis Friedman and Jeff Wright. Producers: David Zucker, Robert LoCash and Gil Netter. Director: David Zucker. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, slapstick violence) Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

If your comic tastes run to the urbane, this is most definitely the summer of your discontent. THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY brought you mangled genitalia and dangling bodily fluids; MAFIA! featured flaming flatulence and a boy being smuggled in a donkey's rectum. And now comes BASEKETBALL, co-written and directed by David Zucker (THE NAKED GUN) and starring Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of "South Park" who gave the world a talking piece of excrement named Mr. Hankey. Anyone want to place bets on whether it's going to be an Oscar Wilde-ian romp spilling over with tres bon mots?

Fact is, BASEKETBALL tosses off the kind of groin-level humor that makes THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY look like a particularly droll "New Yorker" cartoon. This tale of two losers (Parker and Stone) who create a sports sensation combining elements of baseball and basketball scurries about in search of every imaginable source of vulgar, offensive and/or just plain immature comedy. Stone lactates like a Parisian fountain; Parker slurps liposuctioned fat from a plastic bag; both stars sport prosthetic male members which make it look like they're auditioning for the sequel to BOOGIE NIGHTS. No subject is too sensitive for some sort of peurile gag: not gays, not foreign accents, not raving bigots, not necrophilia.

Damn them all for making it funny too often to dismiss. Yes, BASEKETBALL certainly crosses the line at times from daring to mean-spirited. It also includes some wicked shots at professional sports, from corporate stadium sponsorship to peripatetic franchises to bizarre promotional giveaways (including "Dozen Egg Night," "Free Range Chicken Night" and "Anal Probe Night"). The best running gag comes from the baseketball rule which allows opponent to taunt the player with the ball in an effort to psych him out. Stone and Parker take the opportunity to run with every possible distracting comment, gesture and visual image. There's nowhere too low for them to sink, and they get enough laughs to justify going just a bit lower the next time.

It's hard to tell whether Parker and Stone have the stuff to be legitimate big screen comic stars. BASEKETBALL is an ideal showcase for their malicious, "dude"-spewing wastrel characters; they're like Bill and Ted with more acid in their veins. Still, there's a sense that they're just the slightest bit desperate to impress, too eager to reach for a four-letter punch line before coming up with a more clever alternative. When Parker finally goes for a laugh by trotting out the voice of "South Park's" Eric Cartman, you can bet the audience will go wild with recognition. It just feels lazy, one overgrown adolescent playing to other overgrown adolescents, congratulating himself for being the id boy of the moment.

Strange as it may seem, David Zucker ends up being the steadying influence which reins in Parker and Stone. Zucker knows how to play a near-subliminal visual joke with the best of them, and he works in plenty of knee-slappers in BASEKETBALL. He also calls on AIRPLANE! alums Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Stack to help out, with Stack doing a particularly hilarious parody of his own gig hosting "Unsolved Mysteries." Even when he steals from himself in the character of a sick boy at the mercy of idiots (a la Jill Whelan in AIRPLANE!), he gives it a fresh twist; there's nothing quite like watching an 8-year-old in need of a liver transplant doing rounds of tequila shots. That's one of the tamer bits in BASEKETBALL, a film that sometimes doesn't know when to quit. There will be viewers who revel in that sort of "look at me, Ma, I'm being irreverent" irreverence. Others will shake their heads at the continuation of their comedic summer of discontent, even through their own embarrassed giggles.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 baseketball joneses:  6.

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