BASEketballIn my recent review of Mafia!, I said that director Jim Abrahams wasn't as capable of producing a comedy as David Zucker. Little did I know that both of them wrote the Naked Gun series (hey, you try to keep them straight!). However, when it comes to direction, neither of them really shine. But Abrahams is arguably the more skillful, and he gains a lot of laughs from visual humor that is quick and sporadic. If you blink, you may miss something. Here, however, there is nothing very subtle at all.
BASEketball is truly a horrendous comedy that is missing the one thing it should be filled with: genuine laughs. I haven't been quite as bored in a film since Blues Brothers 2000. Most of the problems lie with the actual story because it does not parody something particular. Instead, it tries to be original, and it fails. The Naked Gun series were always successful because they were a parody of a wide variety of other medias, such as film, television, and theater. It also had a top-notch cast that just couldn't seem to fail.
BASEketball begins with a very funny parody of modern day sports phenomenons, such as baseball. Unfortunately, the game was ruined by players begging for higher salaries and finally striking. Soon, fans just stopped attending the games, and the managers got desperate. With many various attempts, they finally just resolve it and hope for the best. Unfortunately, the film just plummets from there. Joseph Cooper (Trey Parker) and Doug Remer (Matt Stone) are shown as a couple of high school graduates who still haven't passed the "party" stage. Hoping to impress the girls at a going-away party, the two invent a new game in order to challenge some jocks. "It's basketball with baseball rules," explains Remer. If the film wasn't enough, the game isn't all that interesting either.
Soon, Remer and Cooper begin gathering crowds as they challenge people to play in their driveway. Quickly, it becomes a neighborhood phenomenon. One of the highlights of the game is the "psyche outs," which allow the defense to do anything to make the other person miss. A whole lot of time is spent showing us how Remer and Cooper psyche out their opposing teams, and after a while, it just gets annoying. Various gags from cutting off one's finger to drinking a bag of fat removed during a liposuction procedure all increase in desperation as the film near's its end. Whenever the screenwriters couldn't come up with something funny, they would just stick in another one of those moments.
They get funded by Denslow (Ernest Borgnine), a multi-millionaire who likes the game and hopes to get them into the pros. After Denslow dies from choking, the team is given to Cooper... with one catch. If they don't win the next season's championship, the team goes to his widow, Yvette (Jenny McCarthy). Game after game, the Beers (Cooper's team) defeat one challenger after another (oh yeah, do you know how boring it is to watch two guys never miss a shot?). But soon, money becomes an issue, and Remer begins to get greedy. Along the ways, you can expect the guys to get angry with each other, miss shots on purpose, fight constantly over women, and then make up by kissing (in one of the funniest scenes since In & Out). In the mix is also a subplot involving Jenna Reed (Yasmine Bleeth) and a young boy who needs a liver transplant. Reed is in charge of a charity for kids with serious ailments, and Cooper's sympathy impresses her. Yada yada yada, they get together in the end... no big surprise there.
Of course, this all is just really tepid and unfunny. This film contains the same problem that plagued Mafia!: the main actors just weren't funny. Albeit, Parker and Stone's cable program South Park is a riot, but they wrote and did the voices. Here, they are just putrefying. All the funny elements involve other actors who are much more suitable for this kind of comedy. Take, for instance, Jenny McCarthy. Granted, I'm not a fan of hers, but her seriousness about the role is so funny that I almost thought of giving the film a better review. But darn it, she isn't in there enough. One of the funniest moments involves a greedy owner asking, "Would you like to come over to my place and lay some carpeting, if you know what I mean?" Well, it's definitely not what he means, or at least what you might expect. McCarthy's reaction to it all is genuinely pleasing (oh, and watch for the humorous scene with the chrome balls). Also in for comic reasons is, surprisingly enough, Robert Stack from TV's Unsolved Mysteries. Here, he does a profane but serious spoof of his show, and it is definitely the funniest moment in the film. McCarthy and Stack are the two best actors in the film (I can't believe I'm saying this) and they deserve better. Ernest Borgnine is wasted in a dumb role that requires him to die. I just hoped that the rest of the cast would follow his fate. Yasmine Bleeth does a good job, but she's not very funny. She is mostly there for the obligatory reaction shots that can usually enhance the comic effects. Here, nothing.
Four different screenwriters were in charge of this film, one of which was Zucker himself. Perhaps this goes to show that Abrahams is the one who made the situations in Naked Gun funny. Hopefully the two will team up again to give us something better, like another Naked Gun. I'd pay to see that. I also must note the costuming by Catherine Adair. I was quite impressed by some of the leather-bound women, but after a while, I got to thinking that these women were degrading themselves in front of the camera. If I was so obsessed with this, I knew it couldn't be a good movie. Most of the jokes regarding these women fail completely... but most guys will admit it sure is fun to watch.
BASEketball is rated R for crude humor and profane language, nudity (real and prosthetic), politically incorrect humor, and sexual innuendos. Some of the more entertaining sequences involve homosexuals and transsexuals. At least they were funny. But for a comedy, the humor bats about a .095 average. For all the laughs, there are ten times as many silent moments. The theater I saw the film in seemed to agree.