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The Benchwarmers
DIR: Dennis Dugan • WRI: Allen Covert,
Nick Swardson • PROD: Jack Giarraputo, Adam Sandler •
DOP: Thomas E. Ackerman, Sebastian Jungwirth • ED: Peck
Prior, Sandy S. Solowitz • DES: Perry Andelin Blake •
CAST: Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder
This film contains around six laughs. If
we're being generous. Although there are plenty more if you're
a fan of fart jokes. The fact that this is a Rob Schneider movie
produced by Adam Sandler should tell you all you need to know:
unless you're a fan of Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo then
this one's not for you. But if you still need convincing...
It's a basic Revenge of the Nerds set-up:
Schneider plays Gus, an aging landscaper who once had a chance
of being a baseball great, if only he hadn't let the school
bullies scare him off the court. Gus teams up with his friendly
hopeless geeks, Richie (David Spade) and Clark (Jon Heder),
to make a baseball team of nerds to play against the bullies.
The only problem here is that there's only three
of them, not quite enough for a real team, and that they only
show real talent when playing against 12 year-olds. Fortunately
for them, local millionaire nerd Mel (Jon Lovitz) decides
to create a special baseball league just for the Benchwarmers
and their Little League competitors.
The prize for the winners is their own baseball
stadium, but the most important prize of all, of course, is
the lesson we learn in the end. And that lesson is acceptance.
Yes, the painfully obvious moral of the story is that nerds
and bullies can get along because we're all the same really;
people can change, and we can learn to forgive. And isn't
that a life lesson we all must learn?
Well, not really. Because acceptance only goes
so far, as we're encouraged to laugh at the baddies with their
gay lapdog and the foolish Mexican who loses the game because
he gets drunk on Tequila.
All lessons aside, The Benchwarmers fails
to entertain. First and foremost, it's not very funny. Jon
Heder tries to replay his breakthrough role in Napoleon
Dynamite, but fails to recapture any of its offbeat humour.
And other occasionally funny actors like Spade and Lovitz
seem to have their sense of humour sapped by a bad script.
But the worst thing about this film is that,
for a feel-good summer film, it doesn't make you feel very
good. At just 80 minutes long it seems like the longest film
in the world. And the Benchwarmers are so infuriatingly unfunny
that you don't actually want them to win.
The real moral of the story is that toilet
humour and catchphrases do not make a good film. The Benchwarmers
lacks so many things, including believability, good acting
and a decent script. But most importantly of all, it's a comedy
that's just not funny. Give this one a miss, stay at home
and laugh at the wall instead. Trust me, it's funnier.
Anne Marie Conlon
Rated
TBC (see IFCO
website for details)
The Benchwarmers is released on 2nd June 2006.
The
Benchwarmers – Official website
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