BASEketball

From the comedic summer of 1998--which featured bodily fluids, mangled genitalia and flaming flatulence among its more urbane moments--comes the groin-level humor of BASEketball, which makes There's Something About Mary look like a particularly droll New Yorker cartoon. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone star as a pair of losers who create a sports sensation combining elements of baseball and basketball, in the process discovering every imaginable source of vulgar, offensive, and/or just plain immature comedy. No subject is too sensitive for a puerile gag: not gays, not male lactation, not foreign accents, not raving bigots, not necrophilia. Damn them all for making it funny too often to dismiss entirely. Yes, it crosses the line at times from daring to mean-spirited, but it also includes some wicked shots at professional sports, from corporate stadium sponsorship to peripatetic franchises. Too bad Stone and Parker often get in the way of the gags. BASEketball is an ideal showcase for their malicious, "dude"-spewing wastrel characters, but they act just a bit desperate to impress, too eager to reach for a four-letter punch line before coming up with a more clever alternative. When Parker goes for a laugh by trotting out the voice of South Park's Cartman, it feels like one overgrown adolescent playing to other overgrown adolescents, congratulating himself for being the id boy of the moment. Strange as it may seem, director David Zucker ends up being the steadying influence, including plenty of solid near-subliminal visual jokes. Even when he steals from himself, he gives it a fresh twist; there's nothing quite like watching an 8-year-old in need of a liver transplant doing rounds of tequila shots. That's one of the tamer bits in a film that sometimes doesn't know when to quit reveling in its "look at me, Ma, I'm being irreverent" irreverence. It's the kind of movie you'll be shaking your head at through your own embarrassed giggles. Optional. (S. Renshaw)