As anyone following my South Park Ranked knows, I’ve been watching South Park since the first episode and I also saw BASEketball in theatres because of South Park. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched it because my DVD copy is fucked up and the last 30 minutes or so doesn’t play and the middle skips a lot. I know me and my friends loved this movie growing up and we used to play BASEketball after school fairly often for like two months because adolescents have an attention span that can only be measured in nanoseconds. It’s kind of a shame that game didn’t take off. But seeing this was on Netflix and with The Coronavirus and the shutting down of all sports, BASEketball felt like the perfect panacea, and it certainly was.
Nearly 25 years later, BASEketball doesn’t quite hold up. The opening montage of the downfall of sports (narrated by Stephen McHattie from Pontypool) is still peak satire and will always be hilarious.
There are a lot of jokes in the film which are reminiscent of the earliest South Park episodes where profanity and shocking humour were more prevalent in Parker and Stone’s work than biting and clever satire…and some of it just doesn’t land anymore. Parker and Stone also aren’t the greatest actors though they do a more than serviceable job here. I think if there is one clear thing missing from this movie it’s a great supporting cast to lift them up, and while the supporting cast is too serviceable enough to each get some laughs out of us, the best comedies always have a strong cast of supporting characters (it’s a big reason why I Love You, Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall are so good).
Losers clothing is something all sports should adopt for interviews after championship games
A big part of the film, the psyche outs, aren’t as funny as I remember though some of them still made me laugh pretty good, specifically the “I guess that’s why she didn’t move around a lot” psyche out, which works because it’s reliant on the character of Squeak, who is the lone supporting character who works pretty well in the film - and he looks like a midget version of Matthew Perry cross-pollinated with Fred Savage. Thankfully, aside from the opening montage, my favourite scene of Roadkill Caught on Tape is still as hilarious to me as ever.
All in all there is enough sports parody sprinkled throughout the film that works well, like lampooning stadium giveaways with Dozen Egg Night and Free Range Chicken Night and the retiring of Jocks instead of jerseys. Another great sports scene is when the sports broadcasters are breaking down the BASEketball playoff picture after 7 months of post-season play is out of the way. If only the film was more focused on this kind of great satire instead of a bunch of dick jokes and toilet humour, it could have been a truly special film. Instead, it’s a funny comedy that doesn’t live up to the greatness that opening montage promised us. And I’m still pretty mad that the scene that was in all the TV spots featuring Bill Clinton never made it into the actual film.
So while BASEketball doesn’t quite live up to the memory I had of it, I still had a really fun time watching it. If you enjoyed the film before, you will probably have a fun time watching it again as well. If you’ve never seen it before, then this might be a coinflip for you. A lot of the humour is very of its time and will probably speak better to thirteen year old boys watching it for the first time than 35 year olds. So if you’re feeling down because there is no March Madness and NBA and no Baseball, then BASEketball is the perfect solution! Or you'll want a refund like Stan and Kenny.
