Zuck It To Me

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Hurling, flatulence, jiggling breasts, the odd vibrator joke--all the elegant elements we've come to cherish in what is now, let's face it, the mainstream of American movie comedy--are present in BASEketball. So, of course, are the young TV masters of gross-out, South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone, being mentored through their major--all right, maybe we're stretching a point here--motion-picture debut by one of the genre's old masters, David Zucker, auteur of Airplane! and the Naked Gun epics.

So far, the news is good for the movie's core audience, the Clearasil crowd. The problem may be that Zucker, in his maturity--O.K., O.K., that's another stretch--has social satire on his mind. His target is big-time sports, and he casts Parker and Stone as purists, good-natured rather than transgressive, trying to protect the eponymous game they invented (it combines hoop shooting with baseball scoring) from commercialization when it moves from their driveway to professional arenas.

It's hard to imagine kids caring much about sports traditions being travestied in our time. Still, the director and his writing colleagues hit lots of right notes: franchise instability, hyping broadcasters, endless play-off seasons, even the exploitation of Third World children in the making of sporting goods. One team dresses its cheerleaders in dominatrix outfits. Subtle is not Zucker's middle name. But neither is stupid. If his comedy is more useful than youthful, let's count that as a sweet surprise, a minor blessing.

--By Richard Schickel