RED ENVELOPES: Off BASE

The one drawback to sharing your Netflix list with friends is that they're likely to call out anything that doesn't meet the highest cinematic standards. Sure, you may have Kiezlowski's Decalogue in your queue, but put The Village on there, and it's time to release the hounds. So I can't really be surprised that I got criticized. That someone would actually question my sanity was to be expected. You have to be ready for a fair amount of abuse when you move BASEketball to the top of the list.

There's an art to a really good stupid movie. A least one element of that art is getting people with a strong sense of the kind of stupid that works. BASEketball would seem to have hit a gold mine in that department: director David Zucker, part of the triumvirate that concocted Airplane! and Kentucky Fried Movie, and stars Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the twisted minds behind South Park and Team America: World Police. Now these guys know stupid.

So it's a little shocking how far short of the mark they fall. Parker and Stone play buddies who invent a strange variation on the classic driveway hoops game of Horse, with elements of baseball thrown in for maximum weirdness. The game inexplicably becomes a national sensation, but Parker finds himself fighting to keep the game from being taken over by commercial elements.

Does this sound like a really thin plot? Trust me, it's thinner. What little story there is has clearly been slapped together as an excuse to showcase the game, and that's a mistake, because nobody cares about the game. So you've got a premise that's not interesting, and a story that's irrelevant. What's left? Gross-out jokes. Part of the game is founded upon the idea that you're allowed to do anything to distract your opponent. Hence, we get an awful lot of time devoted to Parker and Stone doing offensive and repellent things. So there's not even any surprise to it. Someone comes on the screen for the express purpose of grossing us out. That's a lot of pressure to put on your movie. And a man shooting milk out of his nipples does not live up to the hype.

The real shame is that Parker and Stone are fairly charming leads, and BASEketball's failure means that they'll probably stick to South Park. It's easy to see them as Terrance and Philip come to life, and they certainly throw themselves into even the lamest of gags with aplomb. Supposedly, they ad-libbed a good portion of the script. Someone still must have been holding the reins, though, because other than a marvelous exchange revolving around the use of a word you would describe a person who has sex with pigs, the jokes rarely reach the shocking laughs of the best South Park episodes.

In fact, that may sum up the film's problems in a nutshell. It's willing to be gross, but it's almost like they're not willing to far enough. Consider their use of guest stars. Remember how silly Zucker was able to make Leslie Nielsen look? Or Priscilla Presley? Here, you've got Jenny McCarthy as a wicked widow. The woman's definitely from the anything-for-a-laugh school of comedy. But they're not willing to exploit that. Robert Vaughn is fully prepared to ooze evil from every pore. But the most he ever does is farm out some clothing contracts to Asian sweatshops. That's it? Yeah, it's unfair. But it's penny-ante. All along, the film holds back from getting really shocking, really angry, really absurd. Every punch is pulled. Every bit is played safe. It's the gross-out comedy that doesn't want to offend you.

I have to single out the terrible casting and awful performance of Yasmine Bleeth as the film's love interest. It's almost unfair to pick on her, now that the world remembers her less for Baywatch and more for being a cocaine-addled skank. But taking a glorified swimsuit model and casting her as a demure caretaker of sick children (and costuming her in a series of chaste coats and turtlenecks) is just dumb. And her flat, lifeless performance does nothing to dispel the notion that she should only play a hot chicks. One bad decision can tell you a lot about how the other bad decisions get made. So remember: the filmmakers cast Yasmine Bleeth entirely for her acting skills. This helps to explain a lot about how BASEketball came to be.

Strangely enough, my favorite performances were the stunning, career-damaging, utterly unexpected cameos by sportscasters Bob Costas and Al Michaels. This is just astounding. How did they get them? Didn't they read the script? Were they just disappointed to be left out of The Naked Gun and would agree to anything? There is a perverse thrill in watching familiar faces getting vulgar. (Were you hoping to watch Tim McCarver drop the S-word? Your day has arrived.) But Costas and Michaels really sell it, fully investing in the crude, guttural jokes they've been handed. An early scene in which Michaels makes an inappropriate comment about the sideline entertainment, and Costas recoils in horror, is possibly the funniest in the entire film.

In fact, most of the film's successful jokes come at the expense of the world of sports. One of my favorites riffs on the familiar scene of victorious athletes celebrating in their locker room, spraying champagne onto their new Champion hats and t-shirts. In BASEketball, the losers also get t-shirts proclaiming their failure, complete with tags still attached. It's little details like that the movie gets right. But a little of that only goes so far, and since BASEketball really has nothing else to offer, the movie ends up being exactly the dud everyone thinks it is.

So BASEketball isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but it sure ain't good. Do I regret having it on my list? Well, I wish it had been better. But I was always going to wonder. Besides, you've got to have a stupid movie on your list. BASEketball won't be my last.

In fact the comments are already starting to come in. "Shane. Really? Mr. 3000...?"