Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Two losers from Milwaukee, Coop and Remer, invent a new game combining basketball with the rules of baseball. When the game becomes a huge success, they, along with a billionaire's help, form the Professional Baseketball League where everyone gets the same pay and no team can change cities. When a rival owner wants to institute major rule changes, Coop and Remer's team is the only one standing in the way.
BASEketball is a late-90s Zucker/Abrahams-style comedy vehicle for South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it never quite reaches the anarchic heights of their best work. The plot is a thin sports-comedy scaffold—predictable underdog arc with a corrupt villain—earning no special marks. Parker and Stone are entertaining but amateurish as actors, relying on personality over craft. Cinematography is purely functional, indistinguishable from TV-movie aesthetics of the era. Novelty gets a slight bump for the genuinely clever conceit of the invented sport and the irreverent humor that reflects Parker and Stone's distinctive sensibility, even if the film doesn't fully exploit it. The ending is by-the-numbers feel-good resolution with no surprises. A cult curiosity more than a comedy classic.