Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

BASEketball ranks in my top 3 movies of all time. It’s non-stop comedy. Every joke is funny. They even turned Steve Perry into a joke. Steve Perry was not a joke before. And he isn’t now. But it was funny in the movie. And every other joke they have is awesome as well. It’s easily one of the best parodies I’ve ever seen. Mel Brooks would be proud.  

What’s it about? BASEketball is about two guys, Coop and Remer, who are two losers that have no jobs, no money, no prospects, so they create a game and it becomes super popular and a mega-tycoon creates a professional league out of it. There’s rules in the league to prevent corruption, but one of the owners finds a workaround and convinces Remer to help in a scheme to create a clothing line and blackmails him. Coop has to save the day and save a young boys life at the same time. A young boy dying of cancer. That’s a side story.  

What’s good? How the jokes are written into the plot make for a great script. Everything flows seamlessly. It isn’t choppy like most parodies are. It flows like a regular movie. It has a Seinfeld-like feel to it, how everything kind of fits together in the end. 

What’s bad? If anything, I’d say it’s predictable. It is a parody. So, you know what’s coming. It’s not like it’s throwing any curveballs at you or anything. It’s a pretty standard script. It’s just funny in the way that it does it. Funny enough that you could watch it over and over again. 

The acting? The acting is fantastic. The facial expressions on everybody are worth watching the movie by themselves. The psych-outs are some of the best parts of the movie. It’s just a great time. 

The effects? The practical effects are very well done for a parody. It was made by the same people that made The Naked Gun movies. And they had really good effects in them as well.  

The parody? Not only is it a parody of sports movies, but it’s a parody of just movies in general. Like when Coop is driving in his car and the radio is playing the sad song and it starts listing EXACTLY what is happening in the movie. That’s every sad driving scene in every movie you’ve ever seen up until it starts listing EXACTLY what is happening… 

No-line Walk-throughs. One of the great running gags throughout the movie is people with no lines just walking through the background. Famous people or people doing something obvious. Like Kareem Abdul Jabbar punching his timecard in the museum, or the guy with the ribbon pinned to his chest with no shirt on in the stadium… 

South Park references. Even though Matt and Trey had nothing to do with the writing of the movie, they still got to sneak some South Park references into the movie. BASEketball came out in 1998, during South Park’s second season. It was still a pretty new show. But it was already huge. South Park was an immediate hit. It’s probably why Matt and Trey got this role… 

So, you’ve probably never heard of BASEketball, but if you haven’t, you should see it immediately. Because it’s one of the funniest movies you’ll ever see. It ranks up there with anything Mel Brooks has ever done. And that’s saying something. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…