Top 365 Films – #344 – BASEketball (1998)

DIRECTED BY: David Zucker

STARRING: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Dian Bachar, Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Vaughn and Robert Stack

BUDGET: N/A

EARNED (Worldwide): $7.02m

AWARDS: None

 

SYNOPSIS

Two childhood friends are pro athletes of a national sport called BASEketball, a hybrid of baseball and basketball, and must deal with a greedy businessman scheming against their team.

 

Coop and Remer are best friends and currently unemployed. One night they attend a party hosted by a former classmate, uninvited, and end up challenge two former classmates to a new game that they picked up ‘in the hood’. Clearly making the rules up as they go along, the premise of the new game is simple – It’s basketball with baseball rules, which also includes psyche out’s. Soon the game they created, BASEketball, takes off as neighbourhood teams are created and five years later, with help from billionaire Ted Denslow, the National BASEketball League (NBL) is created but now comes under threat with as the Milwaukee Beers are the only team standing in the way of major rule changes that the owner of the Dallas Felons wants to institute.

 

Guilty pleasure alert. BASEketball is of simple taste and humour, but I actually enjoy it everytime I watch it. The film tackles, with hilarity, in the opening about sports becoming corporate brands that are no longer for the fans (teams moving cities for example) and how this new game BASEketball is for the everyman, which then comes under threat with the Dallas Felons owner, Baxter Cain, wants to change the rules to allow teams to move cities and players to switch teams, get sponsorship deals etc. This gives an open playing field for Zucker, Parker and Stone to tackle sports for gags on these things and hell even tackling child labour for the teams clothing line that is then merchandised. The gags are simple, dumb yet that’s what makes most of them hit for me, particularly the psyche out’s,  especially and Parker and Stone on screen bouncing off each other, if it was any other duo I don’t think the film would’ve worked as well.

 

FAVOURITE SCENE: The song that plays on the radio while Coop is driving is funny but the bits with Robert Stack randomly popping up in certain moments in the final third are funnier on repeated viewings.

FAVOURITE QUOTE: ‘Theodore Denslow dead at eight-five….his hairpiece was twenty-four.’ – News Presenter 

DID YOU KNOW?: Trey Parker and Matt Stone agreed to do this film under the assumption by the time filming began, South park would have already been cancelled. It wasn’t, and having been committed to both projects, had to attend principal photography for this project during the day, and produce South Park during the night, leaving very little time for any sleep.