The Benchwarmers

Review by Clint Morris

Do you: A) Find farting in other people’s faces, amusing?

B) Get a kick out of watching others pick, and consequently, eat their snot?

C) Shamelessly snigger at someone’s speech impediment, phobia, sexual preference, introversions, or lack of sexual experience?

D) Find Rob Schneider a comedy god?

E) Love Napoleon Dynamite so much, you’d watch its star, Jon Heder, in anything from here on out?

F) Think David Spade should be getting the equivalent paycheque to Jim Carrey?

G) Like to be able to turn you brain off when you walk into a theatre?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, then chances are you won’t be disappointed with what’s on offer in The Benchwarmers. If you didn’t though, chances are that the final words Jon Lovitz says in the film - something along the lines of ‘We just wasted our time, didn’t we?’ - will have personal connotation.

Three dimwits (Jon Heder, David Spade and Rob Schneider – playing the more intelligent of the threesome, believe it or not) decide to stand up for ‘put-upon kids’ everywhere, when they challenge the local team of teenage bullies to a game of a ball. Not surprisingly, the adults are the worst baseball players anyone has ever seen – and have got their work cut out for them, if they want to teach the smart-arse’s a lesson.

Anyone familiar with the usual ‘Happy Madison Productions’ offerings – the troupe owned by funny man Adam Sandler, and usually starring either Sandler himself, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Allen Covert or a combination of – knows exactly what they’re in-store for here: crass gags, juvenile humour, unforeseen cameos, male protagonists with brains no bigger than an eraser, and the odd shocker that you just can’t help but laugh at, even if you’re half-way under your seat, hiding, while you do so.

Even the most jaded reviewer can appreciate a good Adam Sandler or Rob Schneider comedy now and then – I quite liked Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, to use a recent example – but most will hurt their eyes looking for something memorable in this latest effort. Though palely entertaining, it definitely could’ve used an extra couple of months in the development stage.

The jokes are okay, but not exactly gut busting, and the set-up of the film is, well, adequate, but as musty as unsealed potato chips (it’s essentially The Bad News Bears meets The Sandlot Kids meets Adam Sandler). Whilst Happy Madison efforts like Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo encompass at least three or four snort-worthy giggles, the laughs aren’t quite as effective here, provoking merely a smile, over a snigger.

Still, there’s enough in here to keep the undemanding happy – or, those that have, um, ah, been out on the booze all night, and needed to wind-down by watching something on the Sunday morning that wasn’t going to hurt the brain…too much. And although deficient of an Adam Sandler cameo (he usually pops up in all these films), it’ll come pretty close to the target market’s expectations…and some may even have to blow-dry their underoos in the restroom afterwards.

Somewhere right now, the head-writer at Happy Madison is sitting in a toilet, writing the script for the next comedy hit, on the back of a thin sheet of toilet tissue. Final draft will be finished, before the full-flush button is pressed, I predict.

2.5 out of 5

The Benchwarmers
Australian release: 11th May, 2006
Cast: Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder, Jon Lovitz, Craig Kilborn
Director: Dennis Dugan
Website: Click here.