“I swear if you guys rip on me 13 or 14 more times… I’m outta here!”

Clare’s Rating: I’m not going to re-recap the movie. Read the review below to find out the basic plot of the flick and then come back here. I can wait…

Clare’s Review: OK then. Allow me to give a wee precursor to my actual review by explaining the following: It has been well documented in the Mutant Reviewer chronicles that on the playground of life, I’m definitely hanging with the kids who’d rather light ants on fire than ride the seesaw. It should also be noted that I grew up in an environment that reinforced the notion that all things can be made funnier with fart noises. So, yes. I have a number of college degrees. I speak three languages fluently. I actively enjoy foreign films and classical music. But I also happen to think BASEketball is screamingly funny. What can I say? I’m an enigma wrapped in mystery meat shrouded by wonder bread.

As has been clearly stated in my previous reviews for South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and Cannibal: The Musical!, I find Trey Parker and Matt Stone to be alarmingly entertaining. I was a little worried about BASEketball when I first rented it because, although I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the universe playing Coop and Remer, I knew that Parker and Stone hadn’t actually written the screenplay and that David Zucker had pretty much lost me back at Airplane! But the ads were actually kind of funny and, hell, what’s $3 for a movie right?

Turns out BASEketball is so funny it nearly killed me. I had one of those really fun experiences where you take a sip of something carbonated (for this demonstration, gin and tonic) and then something really funny happens on screen and you have to either spit the carbonated beverage out your nose and across the room or quickly become a monk and start meditating on the 8th plane in order to calm down fast enough not to have your brain explode. This happened twice actually, in between all the other times I was able to laugh without incident.

The first time was when Ernest Borgnine started singing “I’m too sexy” (Clare sips gin and tonic here) and then starts rubbing his nipples and dancing. (Gin and tonic leaves head, lands on sleeping cat. My kung fu is not very strong). The second time was when Coop and Remer reconcile after having a big fight (gin and tonic is sipped), the music swells and a big sloppy wet kiss ensues. (Clare opts for mind control and nearly faints trying to keep her beverage in her head). The thing about the kiss wasn’t really that it was unexpected or shocking. You could see it coming for days and I’ve seen dudes make out enough times not to find it all that noteworthy. It was more the level of commitment that Parker and Stone put into it that impressed me enough to lose control of my beverage maintenance.

Besides these two near fatal instances, the rest of the movie moves along so quickly that you may have to rewind to catch the myriad of jokes that are slung. By sheer volume alone there’s bound to be SOMETHING to find amusing here. Plus there’s about twenty minutes of out takes after the credits that include even more funny for your money. Yes, BASEketball is dumb. But dumb in a charming kind of way. And really, if something makes you laugh out loud, who cares? Get over yourself and go rent it.

Justin’s Rating: The shot is good! A home run!

Justin’s Review: I’ll make it easy for you: There’s really nothing personally likable about Matt Stone or Trey Parker. They exist to be as disgusting, vile, and tasteless as possible, up to the point of personally flipping off your mother at your wedding. They’d do that, of course, but there’s a time consideration involved. So let go and just hate them — but it’s okay to laugh as well, in the way you’d laugh at your cousin Ted when he lit a firecracker in his nose.

In BASEketball, there are these two losers (Stone and Parker pretty much playing themselves) who have basically done nothing with their lives. I’m sure you can relate. One night they’re at a high school reunion party, and to show up two preppy jerks, they beat them at a game they make up on the spot. It’s called baseketball, and allows your average slobs to compete with super athletes by combining the best parts of both baseball and basketball. A few years later, and the game is in the pros, with Stone and Parker head of a team called the Beers. Joining them is one of the best additions to the cast, a squeak called Squeak (Dian Bachar). The rest of the movie is mainly a “downtrodden team vs. the evil big guys and get the girl while we’re at it” bit.

David Zucker, one of the geniuses behind the Airplane! and Naked Gun movies, would like you to believe that this is an outright satire on the sports industry. And while that’s true for perhaps the first ten minutes, after that, you shouldn’t expect more than a pretty boistrous comedy.

The game itself is what deserves your attention. Each of the teams have a particular theme that goes hand-in-hand with the city it represents (such as the San Fransisco Ferries or the Dallas Felons), and come complete with a squad of barely legal cheerleaders. One of the best parts of BASEketball is that the opposing team is allowed to psyche out the person who’s shooting the basket. Here’s where Stone and Parker really shine: they come up with some of the most hilarious and outrageous strategies which will surely gross you out. My favorite is when they play the audio book version of “The Horse Whisperer” and put the guy in a coma.

All in all, it’s a fairly enjoyable film that goes over the line from time to time. (Side note: why do most clichés involve repetition? “All in all”, “time to time”, etc.) Keep an eye out for the scenes where Parker and Trey do some brilliant bits of satire, including bits from Braveheart, South Park, and others. And the way they pick on Squeak (and the way he reacts) is irresistable to snicker at, sometimes for days after seeing this movie. BASEketball won’t disappoint if you need a film to make you laugh with a few friends. Just, um, make sure you don’t make this your first date movie.