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DVD (13)
The three losers play a series of Little League teams, snatching victory from the jaws of slapstick humiliation.
Schneider winds up playing straight man to Spade, who once again relies on his snarky coward shtick, and Heder, who comes across like someone doing a bad imitation of ... well, Heder himself in Napoleon Dynamite.
It's a movie packed with so many idiot characters that Rob Schneider is cast as the cool guy -- and sort of pulls it off.
Filled with sprays of vomit, fountains of spit and enough hot body air to launch a flotilla of passenger balloons, The Benchwarmers is the sort of trash that Hollywood does really well.
Sandler's latest ode to projectile vomiting, passing gas, gay jokes and physical insults to the groin is basically a feeble cross between The Revenge of the Nerds and The Bad News Bears.
If Sandler had avoided the lowest-common-denominator humor, recast the adult ballplayers as kids, and found a decent director, he might have had a worthwhile movie. Oh, wait -- it's already been made. And it's called Bad News Bears.
In the last line of the film, as the final credits thankfully disappear, Richie casually says "that was a waste of time wasn't it?" Yes. Definitely.
It doesn't take a genius to work out what's on offer: toilet humour, physical comedy, more toilet humour and an Americans-do-it-best schmaltzy climax.
...ultimately nothing more than a silly, egregiously sentimental comedy...
You won't know whether to roll your eyes or smile like a fool, but you will know you've been entertained.
Seems like a wasted opportunity to strike a memorable blow for nerds everywhere.
...there was actually a small smattering of applause when the movie ended. Whether they were clapping for the film or just the fact that it was finally over will have to remain a mystery.
The Benchwarmers is better than it should have been. Only, that's not saying much.
Even Jon Lovitz with a Batmobile, a dwarf attack in a playroom, and David Spade's best wig ever can't save this mawkish misfire.
Unfunny, badly thought out and occasionally downright offensive, this is an extremely poor effort, even by the standards of other Rob Schneider movies.
Just when the baseball slapstick starts wearing thin, a final-reel gush of truly cynical sentiment on behalf of the physically challenged sends the ordeal-factor off the scale.
Highbrow humour is not the film's strong point but there's no faulting the sincerity of this against-all-odds comedy.
The Benchwarmers strikes out. Again and again and again.
This abysmally static comedy, the brainfart of 'the people who brought you Big Daddy' is a mess on every level %u2026 depressingly woeful.
Starring Schneider and Spade, whose careers have been circling the drain for years, and Heder, who won't be far behind them if he doesn't improve his career moves.
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