Reviews of Movies you Might Have Missed:
The Benchwarmers
TEN WORD REVIEWS
"This is the first draft of a potentially mediocre movie."
"One minute into the movie, someone eats a booger. Seriously."
"Hilariously bad in a 'It still wasn't worth watching' way."
"Don't get this movie unless it comes free with pizza."
"If it comes free with pizza, it ruins the pizza."
THOUGHTS
While Epic Movie inspired hatred and lots of it, this movie inspires pity. It's heartbreaking. This poor, struggling fetus of a comedy offering was actually
trying to be good. You can still see its undeveloped heart trying to beat.
...ew. I kind of regret that analogy.
Now usually bad movies don't know what they're trying to be. This movie is the opposite; it knew EXACTLY what it wanted - and that was kind of the problem. This was a Rob Schneider Ego Movie.
Rob Schneider, the guy who usually plays the gross guys/animals/homeless men/crossdresseres/guys-without-any-dignity, decided he wanted to be in a movie that made him out to be cool.
This explains why in a movie about
unlikable nerds, Schneider plays a character who is cool, likeable, intelligent, strong, talented, sporty, confident, athletic, sociable and married to a
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Supermodel who keeps begging him for sex. Seriously - if you don't believe me, go and watch it... actually scratch that. Don't bother, it's not worth it.
Okay, well that doesn't make MUCH sense, but surely no reason to write off a movie, right?
Allow me to let you in on a secret:
There's a whole lot of smoke and blur to distract you from this cold hard fact but: This movie is about Adults beating Children at Baseball.
Yeah, you heard me.
PLOT
We are introduced to three nerds (for the sake of the plot, let's pretend Rob's character is a nerd) who hate baseball and were teased at school. These
fully grown adults decide to teach
children a lesson by beating them at baseball, a game they
don't like and have
no stake in. Sure these children are 'Jocks' but... they're like twelve!
---
They enter a Junior Baseball Round Robin and start to
beat kids at baseball. The other two nerds are terrible and don't help at all, and it's all thanks to Rob's supernatural ability - the lesson being here that
nerds just hold you back.
All the nerd kids start to cheer them on, as they beat
children. At BASEBALL.
Adults beating
CHILDREN.
---
Are you following this yet? Good. Here's the kicker:
The 'evil' team cheats... by hiring an ADULT.
I'm just going to let that sink in for a moment.
That's right. We are supposed to hate those villainous children because they hired an
ADULT to beat a team of
ADULTS. I certainly hope this doesn't start some kind of sick trend.
Now our hard-done-by 'nerds' have to endure a bit of a challenge.
---
Luckily enough our poor adults have a
billionaire backing them, and are trained by robots and actual Baseball stars. Sweet justice.
That'll teach that other guy a lesson about
BEING AN ADULT.
There's a training montage with what I guess is supposed to be a series of cute and quirky exercises but which in actuality are quite obvious
imitable acts of antisocial behaviour and defacement of expensive public property. They smash hundreds of letterboxes with baseball bats and constantly ring this poor guy's doorbell. Honestly! Just leave that poor guy alone!
(Jon Heder's character never hits even one letterbox, he is truly terrible at hitting letterboxes.)
---
The next baseball game they are playing is for the finals or something, I don't really know.
They are going to lose unless Jon Heder's character hits the ball! Something he has never managed. He keeps missing. Oh no!
They tell him to imagine it's a letterbox. In a dramatic moment of dawning realisation and slow-motion wizardry -
he suddenly sees the ball as a letterbox.
THE THING HE WAS JUST AS BAD IF NOT WORSE AT HITTING.
He hits it out of the park. I want to punch something. Anything. Even myself, I don't even care any more.
---
Big twist!
Rob is actually a Jock! The lesson here being that if you're a nerd and you want to be worth something,
become a Jock. Nice.
Apparently Rob bullied this dwarf at school.
The dwarf was bullied so intensely that he reverted to childhood for like
ten years. Luckily an apology is enough to fix
A DECADE OF SEVERE, UNTREATED AND PROLONGED MENTAL REGRESSION. He is talking rationally and maturely in the next scene.
---
Now to be fair, the ending is a nice scene, if not cloyingly mawkish, which actually has a pretty good message but by then it's far too late.
WRAP UP
Now the Plot summary actually left out quite a lot of details, mainly because almost nothing was relevant to the plot.
But I should mention I actually learned a few things during this movie. Mainly I learned how much I hate jokes about homosexuals, oversized props, goths, farts, boogers... and now I hate vomit jokes.
The most painful thing about this movie, even more painful than the plot, is a one scene character who they managed to stretch out over the entire film. The writers vastly overestimated how funny/popular he would be, vastly outstaying his welcome. He also provides the worst, most indulgently crass and uncalled for final beat I've ever seen.
That final joke is actually so distasteful that just thinking about it... I don't want to continue this review.
(Phrase of the day:
'Cloyingly Mawkish')
You probably need to have grown up with Calvin and Hobbes to really get its full impact.
