Organized sports. The bread and butter (or lack thereof) that keeps this nation afloat. Money, power, prestige. All coming with the cost of hard exercise, sacrifice, and dental hygiene. We’ve come a long way from the stone ages – when “sport” was simply a man beating another man senseless. We’re in the future now. We watch men beating one another senseless in 50K resolution through near-holographic screens. Every frame full of sweaty pores and dried saliva.

As these athletes gained their respective fame and fortune, movie studios began to take note, and developed films based on these athlete’s lives. Since they obviously weren’t there to document the athletes’ rise to stardom, they instead opted to abridge the known stories (“known” being the operative word) and create films out of them. Rocky, Remember the Titans, and Fever Pitch, to name a few, won the hearts of millions with their tear-jerking family drama and inspirational eighties-music montages.

But of course, everybody loves a good underdog story. And no, i’m not referring to that one time when baby got put in the corner. No, my friends, i’m simply talking about the greatest underdog sports-film ever made: Baseketball.

A true innovation in this form of the Hero’s Journey, Baseketball begins with our intrepid man-babies Coop (Trey Parker) and Remer (Matt Stone) entering a high school reunion party that they weren’t invited to. The duo is clearly dressed in clothes that they haven’t washed in months – food and beer stains only worsened by the 30-pack they carry around the party like a trophy.

When the duo is challenged to a game of basketball, they oblige, the only problem being that they’re terrible at basketball. So what do our heroes do? They innovate. Rather than giving-in, they decided to change the rules. A combination of classic schoolyard basketball games, Coop and Remer give birth to a new sport called Baseketball.

Even the under-achievers stand a chance

Rather than simply showing you the tale of an over-achieving manimal (or womanimal), Baseketball instead proves that even the under-achievers stand a chance. Considering that no skill is required to play the game, nobody has an advantage. Instead, the players have to constantly adapt, testing new “Psych-Out’s” (in which the defensive team must find a way to distract the offense from completing a basket) and upping the ante. It’s an overhaul of modern sport as we know it.

Humility & The Sport

In most modern sports films, writers and directors alike forgo reality for kitschy, run-of-the-mill emotional subplots that add nothing to the story nor the film. They always seem to wrap up nicely at the end, too. Baseketball gives us these situations, sure. But by not taking itself seriously, the film has the ability to really play with and parody these beaten tropes. For example, “The Beers” (Coop and Remer’s team) eventually form a bond with a terminally ill boy. The boy is a part of a faux “Make-A-Wish” foundation, and his wish is to meet some famous athletes. Unfortunately, he has to settle for meeting Coop and Remer’s team.

It’s so simple. Most modern sports and sports films talk about the complexities of the sport itself , with the ending of the movie usually dictated by a technicality that would cost the winning team the championship trophy. The funny thing is, Baseketball as a sport is almost too simple to have this problem to begin with. It’s “Horse” with distractions, and with a ball made of recycled La-Z-Boy couch material.

The Ska-Punk Soundtrack

Rather than relying on pump-up songs and boring orchestration, Baseketball brings in songs from the most popular ska-punk bands of the nation: Goldfinger, Nerf Herder, even Smash Mouth. Let’s not forget that the house-band for The Beers is Reel Big Fish, performing “Beer” during one of their games. Reel Big Fish even did their own ska rendition of “Take On Me” for this film. If that doesn’t sell you on it, then you probably don’t deserve to see it.

These are just a few of the reasons why Baseketball is the definitive sports film, and it’s very telling of the movie industry that they haven’t followed in its footsteps. It was very innovative for its time, and the fact that it had so many different ideas while still essentially being a sports movie is a testament to how strange Hollywood is with its decision making.

What’s your favorite sports movie of all time? How does it compare to Baseketball?

(top image source: Universal Pictures)