Air ball . . . Air ball . . .
You're more likely to hear such a chant instead of laughter at "Church Ball," a deflated farce about a roughhousing Mormon basketball league.
Of course, good-natured moviegoers might laugh out of frustration, or at themselves for wasting good ticket money on such a dull and pointless movie.
Director Kurt Hale, whose past work includes the promising religious comedies "The R.M." and "The Home Teachers," doesn't have a prayer this time out. The film starts with the rote concept of the underdog sports flick, about a squad of talentless, unconfident losers who work their way to greatness. "Church Ball" brings nothing new to the court. Most of the jokes seem as old as the idea of the underdog sports film itself.
As for all the movie's fresh gags, the only reason they'd never been written before is because they're so wretched.
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"Church Ball" manages to render impotent the comic forces of Fred Willard. The man is so intrinsically funny that he can crack up an audience without uttering a word, and he's saved many a terrible script in his days. It takes almost intentionally wretched writing to make a Willard character seem boring, but this script manages.
Willard plays Bishop Linderman, a pushy hoops fan who secretly diagrams plays while members of his congregation think he's underlining Scripture. Linderman pushes his playbook onto Dennis (Andrew Wilson), the leading player on Linderman's Mud Lake squad. Since church officials have declared this will be the final season of church ball, there's a sense of urgency.
A championship is a tall order due to the team's makeup. The best shooter swears constantly and is always drilled with technical fouls; the center would rather dunk doughnuts than basketballs; and one of the guards is played by Clint Howard. Dennis does his team no favors by enlisting a guy played by Gary Coleman to suit up. Hale seems to think it's hilarious to watch a midget attempt to play basketball. The effect instead is more weird and sad than it is funny. At least the writers spare us one of Coleman's "Whatchu talkin' 'bout" takeoffs.
Susan (Amy Stewart), Dennis' harried wife, narrates the tale of how Mud Lake rises from obscurity to contend with the seemingly unbeatable team powered by a pair of obnoxious lawyer brothers who laugh like hyenas. Susan rolls her eyes at the illogical machismo displayed during the raucous Thursday night games. Elbows are thrown, taunts are spewed and legs are tripped.
Susan wonders in a brief fantasy sequence what it would be like if the women of the church showed such competitive animosity in their side activities. Two females argue over who gets to teach a religious lesson and decide to wrestle it out.
In this scene, Hale and company manage to pull off a double play of ineffective humor. Not only is the scene too bizarre for non-Mormons to relate, it's also likely to offend some of the more uptight members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although the church is never specifically mentioned, there are copious indications that the film takes place in a Mormon world.
Though the film's official running time is only 91 minutes, it seems to run three times that long. That's an effect basketball players will recognize. When you're winning and things are going right, the game seems to fly by. But when you're down, and there's no hope, the clock takes forever to run out and exact its cold mercy.
review
Church Ball
*
Rated: PG for mild language and some rude humor
Cast: Andrew Wilson, Fred Willard, Clint Howard, Gary Coleman
Director: Kurt Hale
Family call: It's a squeaky-clean Mormon movie.
Running time: 91 minutes
Opens Friday at: El Con
