The Benchwarmers

Three adult losers get themselves mixed into playing baseball against kids because they were teased as children and apparently want to show the world that it’s not nice to pick on others (and yet they make fun of the supposed “cool” people too?). What ensues is a half-assed comedy that feels more like a 5-minute “Saturday Night Live” skit financed by buddy-millionaire Adam Sandler.

This comedy made me laugh exactly 3 times during its entire 80-minute run. The first laugh came when we were told that Rob Schneider’s short geeky character in the movie was married to stunning model/actress Molly Sims. I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t supposed to be funny, but it cracked me up to no end. I laughed even more when it was established that Sims’ character wanted nothing more than to fuck her husband – you know, Rob Schneider!! – in the film, but he wanted nothing to do with that because he was too busy playing baseball with the rest of the nerds. Like I said…this was VERY funny to me! The second time I laughed was when we were told that another very hot blonde in the film, played by Erinn Bartlett, was quite interested in hooking up with David Spade’s super-nerdy character. Again, this wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a part of the “comedy” presented in the film…we were simply supposed to believe that any woman in their right mind would be interested in an effeminate, majorly sarcastic loser with a bowl haircut (then again, isn’t the man supposedly dating Heather Locklear in real life?). The final laugh…you guessed it…Jon Heder’s character gets to make out with “Stacey’s Mom” herself, Rachel Hunter, at some point in the movie. Let me tell you…I laughed and laughed and laughed some more.

Other than that, I don’t think I smiled once during this entire picture, except when the man-children visited Jon Lovitz’s rich digs and it was filled with cool Star Wars gear, and for a couple of the one-liners delivered by the dude who played the Puerto Rican baseball player. The rest of the movie was grade-A elementary to junior high gags starting with fart, barfing and “getting hit in the nuts” jokes, and ending with wedgies, tittie-twisters and yeah…more barf and fart jokes (oops, almost forgot those neat booger quips). Most of the time, I’m able to relate to the Happy Madison flicks, even as an adult, because I guess we all manage to maintain a little “child” in us (mine’s in my pants!), but this film’s jokes were beyond teen stuff, and surely targeted at the pre-pubescent crowd. And no direct offense to Heder, but his character might’ve been the stupidest (and unfunniest) character that I’ve seen on the big screen in the past couple of years. Although Spade’s brother in the film, the agoraphobic Howie, comes a very close second (the actor portraying Howie also co-wrote the movie). All that said, I hope that I’m not coming off like this film’s humor is beneath me or anything like that, since I’ve been known to enjoy my share of crappy movies (sometimes BECAUSE they’re crappy!), but this film’s slap-dash manner, its obvious lack of plot or attempt at story, its sad-sack emotional tug at the end, and its embarrassing appearances across the board (and lack of humor, natch), made it an actual physical pain to sit through. All that, and they didn’t even give us the usual Sandler’s staple character shouting “You can do it!” at some point. C’mon fellas…gimme something!

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian