BASEKETBALL

US, 1998, 103 minutes, Colour
Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Dian Bachar, Yasmine Bleath, Jenny Mc Carthy, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Vaughn, Reggie Jackson, Robert Stack.
Directed by David Zucker.

BASEketball comes from the team who at this time, in the late 90s, created South Park. This film came before South Park but employs Parker, Stone and Bachar who contributed regularly to the voices over the long duration of South Park.

The film has the touch of the anarchic – not only with the two stars but also with the direction of Zucker, responsible for such comedies as Airplane, Ruthless People, Top Gun, some of the Naked Gun films as well as of the Scary Movies (he became a staunch Republican in 2004 and made the very anti-Democrat comedy An American Carol in 2007).

The film shows two young boys who love baseball. They aim to be stars when they grow up. However, they become stoners and wander around, playing computer games and exercising their skill in throwing baskets. When they are challenged by some upper-crust students, they invent baseketball, a type of basketball with hoops as well as baseball with running around a diamond. However, the main thing is to gross out the opponent as he or she tries to throw a basket. This technique is called psychout. There are various gross examples, needless to say.

While the comedy is about sport and the practical jokes of psychouts (with the assistance of Squeak Scolari, a small man played by Dian Barker), the point is made about the professional world of sport, the transferring of players, the trading of players, the big salaries. The film takes a stance against these.

A sprightly eighty-year-old Ernest Borgnine plays an entrepreneur who takes on the sport and builds it up. He has a song and dance routine, a death scene with a saveloy – and shows himself to be a good sport. Robert Vaughn is the arch-villain, with plans to control the sport. He machinates against the two – especially, when in a videoed will, Trey Parker inherits the team. Vaughn has a number of good double-take sequences as Matt Stone misunderstands conversation completely. There is also the femme fatale, Borgnine’s widow after three months of marriage, who takes a lot of Robert Vaughn’s innuendo very literally.

Parker and Stone are an agreeable couple, they have an irreverent attitude towards things American while being very American themselves.

The film has some observations on sport and the business management, has a deal to say about snobbery in American society, has something to show about the corporate villainy in management in corporations.

The team was to go on to great success with their television series of South Park, their films, Orgazmo (1997, a satire where a Mormon was persuaded to act in pornographic films – Parker himself having grown up as Mormon), South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut as well as Team America: World Police (2004). They plan to film their Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, which was nominated for three Tony awards in 2011.