VA - BASEketball - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1998)

"Good Taste" is an alien concept to David Zucker, the director of such comic masterpieces as Airplane and Naked Gun. The entire idea of "taste" is foreign to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the post-vulgar cartoon South Park. Anyone expecting a civil comedy of manners from these three minds would be sorely mistaken. Thankfully, their collaboration BASEketball is certainly well within the crude confines of slob humor. Which means, of course, anyone expecting nuanced, subtle music on the corresponding soundtrack is a jackass. There's no Sting to be found on the BASEketball soundtrack -- only hyperactive punk-pop, ska-punk, kitschy retro-swing, faceless post-grunge and Soul Asylum. Naturally, it's targeted at the perennial adolescents that made South Park into an unexpected global phenomenon, but even some of that audience may find the relentless smirking and skanking a little wearying. Then again, soundtrack albums -- especially various-artist collections like this -- are notoriously uneven, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that highlights like Reel Big Fish's irksome, skadelic cover of "Take on Me," Cherry Poppin' Daddies' "Jump in Line" and Soul Asylum's "I Will Still Be Laughing" emerge from the murk. And it also shouldn't be surprising that the murk may be a little too thick for anyone but dedicated fans of the film, or of Parker and Stone.~Baseketball Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine