Baseketball DVD > Reviews > Don't Call Me B*tch!!!...Ok, Squeak!

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Quite funny at times, some amusing cameos, scores points for satirizing professional sports
Disadvantages:	Unrelentingly crude and stupid at times, if you don't like South Park, you probably won't like it

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Last week I wrote a review on ORGAZMO, which is the funniest movie I've ever seen. That was the second film written and directed by the creators of SOUTH PARK (Trey Parker and Matt Stone), the first being the 1993 low-budget film CANNIBAL: THE MUSICAL. In 1998, after ORGAZMO (unfortunately) bombed, they were chosen by director David Zucker (AIRPLANE! and THE NAKED GUN) to star in this silly, sometimes outrageous satire on professional sports.

When he was real young, Joe Cooper (Parker) had dreams of being a big sports star.....while today he has dreams of owning a big sports bar. He and his buddy Doug Remer (Stone) go to a high school "friends" house one day, for the simple reason that Doug wants to have sex with her. Eventually they findthemselves offered a basketball match by the friends' boyfriend and soon invent a new game on the spot: BASEketball, a strange hybrid of baseball and basketball, with the added dimension that every time the opposite team is about to shoot, you can say or do whatever you want to distract them from scoring.

Soon, their game has become a local garage event, then catching the eye of a millionaire (Ernest Borgnine), who wants to make the game professional. Soon, the audience is introduced to a stadium complete with a baseball diamond, a basketball net, a garage (with tools inside it!), and some of the most scantily clad cheerleaders you have ever seen. Their team is now called the Milwaukee Beers and they must challenge other teams with names like the San Francisco Ferries (all the players are gay) and the L.A. Riots.

As a comedy, the film has several laugh-out-loud moments though occasionally it gets a little tooo stupid. It careens wildly from sports satire to crude one-liners, with some other visual gags, including our "heroes" french kissing each other, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Siegfried & Roy are seen as actual museum exhibits, as well as various ways the boys' try to mess up the players' shots by doing things like squirting milk out of their nipples, wearing masks and (my personal fav) they open up thier jersey to see the shooters' wife naked with the one wearing the shirt naked behind her!!!

Four writers is quite a few for a comedy, and this one did have four, though Parker and Stone were not involved as they usually are. While these guys will be likable only to thier fans, the film also has Jenny McCarthy and Yasmine Bleeth doing funny turns, as well as a passel of cameo appearances, including real-life sportscasters Bob Costas and Al Michaels and San Diego Padres' alum Reggie Jackson (who also appearead in Naked Gun. My favorite camero is far and away the one by Robert Stack, who does a spoof of his own show UNSOLVED MYSTERIES ("According to Miss Barbara Philips, a neighbor who asked not to be identified."). Last and certainly not least is perhaps my favorite character, Squeak "Little B*tch" Scolari, played by Dian Bacher, who also played Choda Boy/Ben Chapleski in ORGAZMO. He is cast as a complete runt in this movie who is being constantly thrown insults to by Parker and Stone; "Don't worry, dude, you couldn't get laid if you had a $100 bill hanging out of your zipper," is just one of many!

As funny as the film gets, the film unfortunately suffers from an all-too familiar story, where a campy villian (an admittedly well-cast Robert Vaughn) tries to get control of BASEketball completely, and the twists are just too obvious too notice. Even the character development is ridiculous, like when we know Doug is more easliy manipulated than Joe, and one tries to make himself better and more popular than the other, and they eventually go their "seperate ways." Then again, they do make up with that french kiss......

A comedy to laugh it, if not fall in love for. And remember, you might to check your brain before pressing play on your DVD or VCR. At any rate, enjoy and I look forward to hearing your opinions.