- Actors: Trey Parker, Dian Bachar, Robyn Lynne Raab, Michael Dean Jacobs, Ron Jeremy.
- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC.
- Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo). Subtitles: English, Spanish, French.
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
- Run Time: 94 minutes. Not Rated.
BASEKETBALL - DVD MovieGross-out comedy reached its peak (or nadir, if you will) when this celebration of juvenile crudeness was released in the summer of 1998.
There's Something About Mary was a surprise box-office smash at the same time, and it's a much funnier and (dare we say it?) more intelligently conceived comedy, but there's something to be said for a couple of dudes who blissfully embrace bad taste and improper decorum. As they proved with their popular cartoon series
South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are s! hameless purveyors of scatological humor, and no bodily function escapes their baser instinct for gutter-level guffaws. Here they play a couple of guys who are fed up with the hyper-commercialism of professional sports, so they invent "baseketball"--a hybrid of baseball and basketball--and soon find themselves in the middle of a booming national craze. As baseketball leagues thrive, so does the movie's appetite for puerile shock-jokes and disgusting gags. There are some great throwaway lines and a lot of funny cameos by the likes of Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Jenny McCarthy, Robert Stack, Reggie Jackson, and others, but let's face it--a little of this stuff goes a long, long way. If you laugh a lot, you may be suffering (as Parker and Stone clearly do) from an acute case of arrested development.
--Jeff Shannon ORGAZMO SPECIAL EDITION - DVD Movie
South Park cocreator Trey Parker goes straight for the gross-out humor in this live-action farce set in the adult-movie! industry. Parker stars as an innocent Mormon kid who gets su! cked int o the world of pornographic filmmaking and becomes an international sensation as the porno superhero Orgazmo, all the while hiding his secret life from his milk-fed fiancée. It's practically a one-man show for Parker, who directs, writes, stars, and even performs the self-penned theme song as frontman for his rock band, and perhaps he should have spread the responsibilities a little. As an actor he's surprisingly appealing--his dazed grin and bleached white surfer-dude hair give him an engaging air of innocence (he can also be seen, just as innocently endearing, in the sports farce
BASEketball). Paired with longtime crony Dian Bachar, the diminutive actor who plays his superhero sidekick Chodo Boy, they bring a Hardy Boys naiveté to the rude world of mobbed-up producers and jaded adult film stars. But the film is only fitfully funny, with vulgar jokes that are often more disgusting than humorous and clumsy comic timing sabotaging promising scenes. Only rarely does i! t reach the heights of his hilarious cutout cartoon series, but when he delivers he does so with the carefully cultivated tasteless excess his fans have come to know and love. Matt Stone costars as a clueless photographer and adult film star; Ron Jeremy appears as a gross gangster henchman.
--Sean Axmaker 
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