BASKET CASE

Funny names are Peck's stock-in-trade, but this silly high school sitcom consists of little else, from the opening moment when Graffiti Prep's headmistress Portlee Stouter Winterbottom asks goof-off, hero Higbee Hartburn's help in the coming basketball game with Prat Falls High. Higbee succeeds in drafting tall new student Courtney Dribble for the team, but Courtney can only play ball to the music of the schnitzelboop—and in order to obtain a schnitzelboop player for the game, Higbee has to dress up as old-lady Crinoline Prawltriller and attend the school's Fatuity Hop with the fanny-pinching leader of the senior citizens' band. That's only a sample; Peck also lists all the football teams Higbee's father watches on the televised Kumquat Bowl, the songs performed by Castor Ipecac and the Pimples at the Hop, the starting lineup of the Prat Falls team. . . . With all these shots he's bound to score occasionally, but the Henry Aldrich shenanigans pall.