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Printer-Friendly ModeSNL actors better off left on Bench for awful comedy
April 10, 2006 —
The bases are loaded. There are no outs. The cleanup hitter is stepping to the plate. You sit on the edge of your seat. The count goes to three balls, no strikes. Then he hits into a triple play. That pretty much sums up how anyone with high expectations for The Benchwarmers is going to feel while walking out of the theater.
First of all, look at the cast.
David Spade - funny guy. Jon Lovitz - also funny. Rob Schneider - funny at times. Jon Heder - okay, let's move on.
Secondly, note that director Dennis Dugan is the same man who directed Happy Gilmore, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Saving Silverman. All three of these movies were relatively enjoyable.
Finally, The Benchwarmers is a movie about baseball. Forget about Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, and all of those other crappy baseball movies. Every commercial for The Benchwarmers had me thinking we finally had a good post-Major League baseball comedy.
Eighty minutes later I was begging for Charlie Sheen in an Indians cap.
Basically, everything that could possibly go wrong with The Benchwarmers goes wrong. It goes so wrong that for a minute I started to think that someone was trying to be funny by green-lighting this movie, and then everyone went along with the idea because nobody wanted to be the first one to speak up and say how absolutely stupid it was, until finally the movie was completed and released to theaters, whereupon I, the dupe that I am, purchased a ticket and made a complete ass of myself. But April Fools Day was over a week ago, and this prank is far too cruel for me to sit back and take it. I want my $6.50 back. I want it back now.
But I don't think Happy Madison Productions, the company to blame for this monstrosity, is going to write me a check anytime soon. On a side note, Happy Madison is Adam Sandler's production company and is named after the last two truly funny Sandler films, Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison.
But going back to The Benchwarmers, I didn't hear so much as a snicker in the movie theater during its entirety. The most noise I heard was an old man choking on his popcorn. I will admit that I chuckled a couple of times to myself, mostly because the mere thought of Jon Lovitz driving the Knight Rider car deserves a chuckle, even if it wasn't pulled off on screen all that well.
And that is the biggest problem with this movie - on paper, the jokes must seem hilarious. However, very few of them are properly executed. Nearly all of them made me shake my head in disgust. So instead of trying to fix the stuff that could be funny, the writers just threw in a whole bunch of awful physical comedy involving people getting hit by baseballs, baseball bats, and other baseball-related items, most of them flying out of the hands of the former Napoleon Dynamite. And any movie that relies on Jon Heder acting like he doesn't know how to correctly swing a baseball bat while he's eating his own boogers doesn't deserve to be seen.
David Spade has a few somewhat enjoyable moments on screen, but I think I would hold out for a Joe Dirt sequel before I go see another Spade movie in theaters. The same goes for Rob Schneider, Tim Meadows (who appears briefly), and anyone else who once had a major role on Saturday Night Live in the mid-90s. Movies like The Benchwarmers make me happy that Mike Myers basically dropped off the face of the earth.
In short, don't go see this movie. There was a time when Adam Sandler and his old SNL buddies ruled the comedy scene, but that was about 10 years ago. It's time for them to pass the torch to those actors who can still make us laugh. I'm not going to mention Vince Vaughn by name, but you know the type of guy I'm talking about.
When someone who knows what he's doing makes a baseball movie, maybe I'll go see it. After all, I got suckered into seeing The Benchwarmers. I just hope next time I'm at the movie theater, I don't get hit by so many foul balls.