Average; had potential, didn't use it...

Rating: Null/10 (7 April 2006)

The Benchwarmers/2006/**
Main Stars: Rob Schneider David Spade Jon Heder Jon Lovitz
Well, the good news is that this film was actually one star funnier than Jon Heder's feature film Napoleon Dynamite. Congrats! Not as stupid or nonsense and this film actually had a point to it. Yet did I laugh much? Sorry, no. This film had a story but was missing the directing. Where was the acting involved? Why was the slapstick getting so old? Maybe because every scene involved it. I have to tell you this film was probably the film with the most "comebacks" I have ever seen. "Hey, it's Richie (David Spade), the gay video store clerk and Clark (Jon Heder), the retarded newspaper boy." Gus (Rob Schneider) "comes back" with a good one. "Hey, it's Fairy Jerry (Craig Kilborn)." Then Jerry "comes back" with one of the most horrible ones I've ever heard! "Hey, it's Gus Bus!" No laughs. Gus instead sarcastically says that that one was too good. Then here comes Mel (Jon Lovitz) wanting the grown men that act like kids to join his created team "The Benchwarmers". This team is a little league team (even though three grown men are on it). Okay then. Then there are the nerds that start the team up putting it on the internet for other nerds to watch. They even get a bus called Gus Bus brought to you by the very odd Mel. The team gets their own baseball cards consisting of not only their name but their stats too. Gus gets all the good stats while Clark and Richie get the fouls and strikeouts and even swinging the bat so hard it flies out of his hand and hits a windshield of a car- that's Clark. Then he gets beat up by the opposing team member. The film continues to impress the audience with many kids laughing at stupid slapstick or nauseating or "comeback" scenes. While the teens are either gossiping to their boyfriend or girlfriend or cursing at a scene that just happened which I did hear a stupid teen do. Yawn. The story continues with slapstick and stupid jokes. It also gets involved a little too much in some scenes which was amateurish on the writers' parts. I'm telling ya, the movie has potential; it just doesn't use it. Instead of all these stupid "comeback" scenes which got really old, really fast, they could have had some actual funny scenes where I burst out laughing not just sniggering or smiling which I did throughout the entire film. While the audience is going 'HAAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAA!', 'HOLY S**T!', 'AAAAAHHHH, THAT'S NASTY', I'm sitting there with no emotion, wondering when there will be an "LOL" (Laugh Out Loud) moment if there will be one at all. I have to admit they tried and succeeded in about two or three scenes. But I didn't just look for the humor. Okay, maybe I did. But there was also meaning in the film. People getting bullied, picked on. How can you improve that? Will you ask for forgiveness, bullies, before it's too late? There was actually a story which is also important. But I mainly looked for the laughs and didn't get much out of it. They had potential and they could have gone a lot further yet they just didn't use it. Too much slapstick and "comeback" scenes and also scenes that really did not need to be shown. No, sorry, I do not recommend this film. I will recommend it for people that use "comebacks" often or like slapstick. In my opinion, slapstick got really old, really fast, after "The Three Stooges". Movie directed by Dennis Dugan.