BASEketball (Review)

Baseketball is an interesting film starring South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone mostly because they didn’t write or direct it, they just starred in it, which is kind of weird. It was actually written by David Zucker, whose only film I’ve seen prior to this was the 1980 movie Airplane. The movie follows two friends with very little going for them, who create an sport which (as the title suggest) falls somewhere between baseball and basketball, called baseketball. The sport surprisingly rises to extreme popularity, and eventually the duo find their sport’s purity threatened when an entrepreneur schemes to take control of the sport and make millions, and their friendship is inevitably tested as they each have their own opinions on the situation.

BASEketball is essentially two movies stuck together. One is a standard teen comedy with plenty of sight-gags and raunchy humor, the other is a parody of professional sports movies, featuring all the rise and fall drama that dominate them. As their theatrical acting debut, Stone and Parker work perfectly in this movie. Their real life friendship translates extremely well and they really seem at ease and very natural before the camera. The humor flips between spouting off jokes and insults, and lots of slapstick gags. It’s all delivered in a rapid fire manner that mostly succeeded in getting me to truly enjoy most of the film. There’s a surprising amount of cameos from well-known sports figures like sportscasters, Al Michaels and Bob Costas, who appeared to have a lot of fun with their running commentary. But most of the other cameos like Reggie Jackson seem to be there for no other purpose than for the movie to say they got these stars to appear in the film. BASEketball is nothing more than another lowbrow comedy film, but it is funnier than it has any right to be.