Hangin' out, playin' Nintendo

BASEketball (1998)

Rated: R

Runtime: 103 minutes

Stars: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Vaughn, Dian Bachar, Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy

Director: David Zucker

Plot: Joe Cooper (Trey Parker) and Doug Remer (Matt Stone) have been friends since they were kids. As adults, they invent the games of “BASEketball” (basketball with baseball rules) and become teammates on the Milwaukee Beers team. Ted Denslow (Ernest Borgnine) is a billionaire, commissioner of the National BASEketball League, and owner of the Milwaukee Beers, and he thinks Dan Fogelberg, Zima, hula hoops, and Pac-Man are cool. Baxter Cain (Robert Vaughn) is the owner of the Dallas Felons and wants to make changes to the league that go against everything that makes it special. Squeak Scolari (Dian Bachar) is a member of the Milwaukee Beers and is a little bitch. Jenna Reed (Yasmine Bleeth) is the director of the Dream Come True Foundation and the girl Coop and Remer fight over. Yvette Denslow (Jenny McCarthy) is/was married to Ted and just wants his money. Teams from the NBL compete for the Denslow Cup. Craziness ensues …

Rating—out of 5 baseketballs: 2 ½ baseketballs. ½ for half-recommending the movie, 1 for DVDA, and 1 for my love of “… if you know what I mean” jokes.

Tournament seed: 5–9—movie is favored to win its first game in the tournament and has a good chance to win a second game. But depending on the team it is matched up against, could be an early upset. Be sure to do your research before choosing.

I am sure this movie is either really funny/unfunny and nothing in between with viewers … except with me. I found myself laughing a lot inside, but not a lot outside. I liked the team names: Dallas Felons, Detroit Lemons, Los Angeles Riots, Miami Dealers, Milwaukee Beers, New Jersey Informants, Roswell Aliens, San Antonio Defenders, and San Francisco Ferries. I also liked the “… if you know what I mean” jokes, but most of the other jokes were not really funny. You can only say “dude” so many times before it gets annoying, and “drunk Christian Slater and Robert Downey Jr.” references were probably funny in 1998 … but not anymore. I was never a fan of Reel Big Fish so their appearance in the movie was no big deal, but it is always nice to hear a song called “Warts on Your Dick” by the band DVDA.* The movie is your basic basketball story; owner dies after choking on a hot dog; sick kid gets massages, does some shots, and then watches some Jerry Springer; best friends Coop and Remer break up and one sells out while the other disappears (not even Robert Stack and the Unsolved Mysteries gang can find him); but then Coop and Remer kiss and make up. Yes, they actually kiss. Their make-up comes just in time, because the Beers trail the Felons in the Denslow Cup final 16-0. Cue the “Beers coming back” montage and the Beers trail 16-14 in the bottom of the 9^th. Coop gets his chance to be the hero with two runners on and one out, and he converts the 3-run homerun to win the Denslow Cup.

Sure there is a 50/50 basketball/baseball split, but it’s still a basketball movie. I also learned a lot of useful life lessons: first you have to get a job, then some khaki’s, then you will get the girl … and then if things are going slow with the girl, go home and do some pushups and fuck the sleeve of your favorite jacket. A bunch of sportscasters had several funny lines/scenes, but Bob Costas won the MVP award with this classic:

Bob Costas: You’re excited? Feel these nipples!”

*If you want to know how the band got its name, I recommend looking it up.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Nympho

One on One (1977)

Rated: PG

Runtime: 98 minutes

Stars: Robby Benson, Annette O’Toole, G.D. Spradlin, Gail Strickland, Melanie Griffith

Director: Lamont Johnson

Plot: Henry Steele (Robby Benson) is a small town high school basketball star in Colorado who receives a scholarship (and a car) from Western University in Los Angeles; he’s short and likes the reverse layup. Janet Hays (Annette O’Toole) is a grad student, teacher’s assistant, Henry’s tutor, and dating a professor; she loves Captain Ahab and hates jocks. Coach Smith (G.D. Spradlin) is a bad teacher and gives up on his players too quickly. B.J. Rudolph (Gail Strickland) is the secretary to Coach Smith and a whole lot more we will get into later. Melanie Griffith is “the hitchhiker” and we never learn her name. Henry thinks he’s hot stuff, but he has a lot to learn on/off the court if he wants to succeed in basketball/life.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 0. I don’t understand why this movie is rated so high and why people like it so much.

Tournament seed: 16—movie makes the tournament only because it is an automatic qualifier. Has no chance of advancing. Avoid picking for any reason.

I’ll begin this review with a little nerd fact: it was written by the star of the movie Robby Benson. Which totally explains why it feels like it was written by a 17-year-old boy. Henry is awkward and not funny; but he picks up a hot hitchhiker (a very young Melanie Griffith), gets his ass pinched by the coach’s attractive secretary, gets the phone number of a pretty sorority girl, stumbles upon some girl at a party having what appears to be an orgasm on a bed, drives B.J. home from the party while she licks him and then … well proceeds to live up to her name, and then eventually scores his tutor. I remember when all of that happened to me in my first 2 weeks of college. This movie makes very little sense; Henry shouldn’t fit in. The entire team except for Henry looks 28; he thinks Arby’s, McDonald’s and Jack in the Box are fine restaurants; he loves his letter jacket more than Kevin Arnold loved his Jets jacket (yay Wonder Years reference!); and he drinks Coke at a party while everyone else is snorting it. But somehow everyone falls for him. Maybe it’s the sweet music of ‘70s super group Seals and Crofts (best known for their smash hit “Summer Breeze”, which unfortunately is not in this movie) scattered throughout. The dialogue has little to offer, with lines like “Hey I’m not an animal; I just came here to learn.” There is not much basketball action until the end. Everything is mostly shots of practices where Henry is taking a pill and getting so hyper he starts acting like a Globetrotter one minute, and then the coach making Henry do stupid drills hoping he will quit the next. The coach falls out of love with Henry about halfway through the movie and figures if he doesn’t let Henry travel with the team and only plays him when the team is ahead 110-41 with 2 minutes left, that Henry will agree to renounce his scholarship. Henry says no and, with the help of his tutor girlfriend and an awesome “working out” montage, Henry prepares himself for the nationally televised game. Everything comes together for Henry when one of his teammates fouls out and another hurts his ankle. Henry comes off the bench with his team down by 6 points with 4:50 left in the game, and takes over with an assortment of sweet jump shots and tricky passes. Down by 1 point with 4 seconds left, Henry steals the ball and the team calls a timeout. The coach draws up a play but when it breaks down Henry gets free underneath the basket and scores at the buzzer to win the game. He gets carried off the court by his team as the celebration erupts.

Coach Smith realizes that he has made a mistake giving up on Henry, so he tries to pretend that he was giving him tough love to make him a better person. Henry sees through this and tells the coach what he can do with Henry’s scholarship:

Henry: “All the way up with a red hot poker. I can play anywhere I want.” ;)*

* Yep, Henry totally winks at the coach after delivering this line.

nO means nO

O (2001)

Rated: R

Runtime: 95 minutes

Stars: Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles, Martin Sheen, John Heard, Elden Henson, Andrew Keegan, Rain Phoenix, Rachel Shumate

Director: Tim Blake Nelson

Plot: Odin (Mekhi Phifer) is the star player on the Palmetto Grove Hawks high school basketball team. Hugo (Josh Hartnett) is the underappreciated son of the coach on the team. Desi (Julia Stiles) is Odin’s girlfriend and daughter of the dean of the school. Duke (Martin Sheen) is Hugo’s father and the coach of the Hawks. Bob (John Heard) is Desi’s father and the dean of Palmetto Grove High School. Roger (Elden Henson) is Hugo’s best friend and has a crush on Desi. Michael (Andrew Keegan) is Odin’s best friend and starting guard on the team. Emily (Rain Phoenix) is Desi’s best friend and Hugo’s girlfriend. Brandy (Rachel Shumate) is Michael’s girlfriend. Shakespeare’s Othello, a classic tale of betrayal, jealousy, love, and racism is modernized in a high-school setting played out on a basketball court.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 1 ½ basketballs. 1 because it’s Shakespeare and ½ for the movie being “recommendable”.

Tournament seed: 10-12—movie is a sleeper, primed to upset a higher seed. Don’t be surprised if other people jump on the bandwagon when the brackets are released. It could play its way into the sweet 16.

I wish I had seen this movie when I was in high school. I never “got” Shakespeare: too many characters playing small parts all adding up at the end to a confusing mess. If I had seen it back then, it would have made Shakespeare easier to understand and me a lot cooler. The basketball scenes are pretty good, until Odin gets the ball and then everyone plays terribly and makes Odin look amazing. The music is all over the place: the movie opens/ends with opera, and jams in an assortment of rap in the middle. The movie starts with the confusion that made Shakespeare difficult for me in high school: Hugo is taking steroids (a storyline that never really goes anywhere); Odin and Desi have a weird conversation about the N-word and a naughty bedroom game (while lying in bed topless while Emily is in the bed next to them); Roger keeps allowing himself to be put in danger by Hugo (without getting any closer to Desi); Hugo steals the team’s mascot (it’s never explained what he intends to do with the hawk); there’s an extremely creepy scene involving Odin and Desi where sex turns into rape (I can’t even begin to describe it); Odin competes in a high school slam-dunk contest and breaks the backboard (the crowd loves it, but then he pushes some kid to the floor which the crowd doesn’t love so much); and then people just start dying. Somewhere in all this, the team is advancing in the playoffs, but we never find out if they win the state title. There is a really cool grainy video montage that sets up the climactic ending that looks like the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination. Hugo’s master plan is supposed to unfold like this from start to finish: tell Desi’s father that Odin raped Desi, have Roger fight Michael, get Michael close to Desi, convince Odin that Desi is cheating on him with Michael, get Emily to steal the scarf that Odin gave to Desi and give it to Hugo who will give it to Michael who will give it to Brandy, hope that Odin will want to kill Desi, and then set up a murder/suicide scene with the help of Roger to make it appear that Michael killed Desi and then himself. It all seems simple. How it actually plays out: Hugo hits Michael with a tire iron, Roger shoots Michael in the leg, Odin kills Desi, Hugo shoots Roger, Hugo shoots Emily, Odin shoots himself, and Hugo is arrested. So close!

The movie sticks pretty close to the Shakespeare play, and is enjoyable to watch, even though Julia Stiles is … well Julia Stiles. Josh Hartnett is pretty convincing and I loved his f-you attitude:

Hugo: “I rebound, I can shoot, I play guard, forward, power forward, you name the position, I fuckin’ play it.”

Empty the ghetto

Fast Break (1979)

Rated: PG

Runtime: 107 minutes

Stars: Gabe Kaplan, Bernard King, Michael Warren, Harold Sylvester, Mavis Washington

Director: Jack Smight

Plot: David Green (Gabe Kaplan) is a basketball guru who works at a deli and drinks tomato juice. Hustler (Bernard King) is a street-ball star, pool shark, and friend of David. Preacher (Michael Warren) has a hit-man after him because he got a 15-year-old girl pregnant. D.C. (Harold Sylvester) used to be a high-school star with offers from 148 colleges but is now on the run. Swish is a girl that pretends to be a guy and only David and Hustler know. David accepts the head coach position at Cadwallader University, a small school in Nevada, for the low price of $60 for every game he wins, with the chance of a 3-year/$90,000 contract if his team beats in-state rival Nevada State. With the help of Hustler, David rounds up 3 couldn’t-be-more-different New York hoop stars to travel cross-country to pursue their basketball dreams.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: ½ basketball. Bernard King was pretty awesome in the ‘80s, probably the 2^nd best forward next to Larry Bird, so that has to be worth something.

Tournament seed: 13–15—movie hangs around with higher seed for the 1^st half, but the 2^nd half results in a blowout. Only advances in the tournament if matched up with an overrated team. Pick with caution.

I had such high hopes for this movie for some strange reason. The basketball scenes (which included former ‘80s Knicks star Bernard King) were really well done, but the rest of the movie was a mess. The music in the movie was a mixture of ‘70s porn music and “black music”, which a character in the movie seems to think is 1939 smash hit “If I Didn’t Care” by The Ink Spots. The movie is supposed to be a comedy, but it starts off with a “love story” that really goes nowhere because David’s wife Jan decides to stay in New York while David travels 2,500 miles to Nevada. The “comedy” then starts to kick in with the fivesome as they are road-tripping to Nevada. They are all enjoying some weed, which quickly turns into a frantic devouring of a pound of marijuana because they think they are being pulled over by the cops. The hilarious $60 per win salary becomes $70 as the team exceeds early expectations. And then the movie’s idea of what is funny is actually a confusing mixture of homophobia and racism. It is harmless in the beginning when it is implied that black people have no idea who Bob Cousy is. But then there is a “white guys suck at basketball” montage, followed by several uncomfortable scenes involving D.C. and Swish. Swish likes D.C., but since D.C. doesn’t know Swish’s secret he thinks Swish is gay, and he is awkward around her … until D.C. realizes he likes Swish, so he decides to pack up his things and go back to New York because you can’t have two gay men on the same team. David tells D.C. about Swish, so D.C. and Swish start seeing each other, which results in a scene in the locker room where they are spotted kissing by the team manager. Sprinkle in a lot of uses of the word f*g, and you have a storyline that was not handled well at all. David and Hustler “hustle” the Nevada State coach in a game of pool; but they don’t want his money, and they agree on a game in two weeks between their teams. An exciting finish is set up; D.C. is going to be arrested after the game by a New York cop that has tracked him down, and Preacher is on high alert because the hit man is there to shoot him at any time. Amid all the distractions and a physical game, CU is ahead by 4 points at the half. The N-word starts to drop, resulting in a Nevada State player being ejected, which David says is just “part of the game”. He later feels bad about it, but by that point his message seems lost. D.C. “hurts” his ankle in a plan to skip town to avoid getting arrested, but not before he beats up the hit man. But wait … D.C. has second thoughts and returns! His team trails by 6 points, cue the “CU coming back” montage, and they are down by 1 point with 15 seconds left. Swish decides that this is the best time to reveal herself, so she runs to the locker room, removes her headband and emerges to everyone’s amazement … a woman. She then slow-motion dribbles up the court and sinks a shot at the buzzer for the win. In the celebration that follows, David spots his mom in the crowd, who tells him that Jan is there too. He finds her outside and she tells him that she has decided to move to Nevada.

A not so funny movie ends with nothing dramatic to show for it either. One of the many funny jokes that failed was this exchange between David and Hustler upon David’s first glimpse of Preacher. David is curious about Preacher’s basketball abilities:

Hustler: “You give him a basketball, he got more moves than a $100 hooker.”

The best players money can buy

Blue Chips (1994)

Rated: PG-13

Runtime: 108 minutes

Stars: Nick Nolte, J.T. Walsh, Ed O’Neill, Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, Matt Nover, Anthony C. Hall

Director: William Friedkin

Plot: Pete Bell (Nick Nolte) is a sons-a-bitch yellin’, f-bomb droppin’, water cooler/chalk throwin’, god-damn screamin’, two-time National Championship winnin’ coach of the Western University Dolphins. Happy (J.T. Walsh) is a “friend of the program” who provides athletes with stuff. Ed (Ed O’Neill) is a sportswriter that is still out to prove that Western University was involved in a “point shaving” scandal a few years before, and is now “buying” athletes. Neon Boudeaux (Shaquille O’Neal) is a center from New Orleans who doesn’t seem to want anything other than to take a test that isn’t “culturally biased”. Butch McRae (Penny Hardaway) is a point guard from Chicago whose mom wants a house and a job. Ricky Roe (Matt Nover) is a forward from Indiana who wants a bag of money and whose father wants a tractor. Tony (Anthony C. Hall) is a senior on the team who may have been involved in the point shaving incident. The current Dolphin team is not good and Coach Bell is tired of it. He wants to recruit a trio of stars, but he is aware that all the good players are going to other schools that give them money and cars. Coach Bell wants to keep his University clean, but Happy likes to get dirty.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 1 basketball for Nick Nolte’s performance.

Tournament seed: 13–15—movie hangs around with higher seed for the 1^st half, but the 2^nd half results in a blowout. Only advances in the tournament if matched up with an overrated team. Pick with caution.

You would think with all the stars and all the plot a lot would have happened in this movie. But it never accomplished what it set out to do. The basketball action was really good, but it only led to one game at the end against Indiana University. The music in the movie was pretty non-existent. “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix is always a pleasure to hear, but other than that we are treated to the “Dolphin Fight Song” a bunch of times. Everything comes together for the big game against Indiana, but after a back-door lob to Neon at the buzzer for the win, Coach Bell feels guilty about cheating, tells the media everything, and quits. Then realizing that they have spent the last 100 minutes boring the viewer, they give a quick 2-minute “look ahead” to tell you that Western University was banned from the NCAA Tournament for 3 years, Tony ends up playing basketball in Europe, Ricky injured his knee and now runs his father’s farm, Butch and Neon dropped out of college and now play in the NBA, and Coach Bell is now coaching high school basketball in the Midwest; which means nothing really bad happened to anyone. The Dolphins were bad and were not going to make the tournament anyway, Tony is playing pro-ball, I am guessing Ricky got to keep the bag of money and his dad got to keep the tractor, Butch and Neon are making millions, and Coach Bell was probably going to retire soon anyway so why not coach where the pressure isn’t as high. So the message I get from this movie is cheat; because even if you get caught, chances are you will end up where you want to be or close enough.

I should have liked this movie more. The only thing I enjoyed was Nick Nolte’s performance, and how it reminded me a lot of my high school basketball coach. He was a tough man, but he cared about his team. I could totally see him cracking a joke about how “The alumni only jerk off when we win” and giving this classic speech Coach Bell gave before the game against the Hoosiers:

Coach Bell: “It’s not what you do God damn it, it’s how you do it. Now, we’re gonna go nose to nose with ‘em and we’re gonna beat ‘em at both ends of the court. And you’re gonna play better than you ever dreamed of because God damn it, that’s what I demand of you.”