The Benchwarmers

Another movie for the arrested development set from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, The Benchwarmers' “heroes” are three adult stooges who take to the baseball diamond to thrash mean little league teams in the name of geeks everywhere. Gus (Rob Schneider) is a nice lawn maintenance guy who links up with two neighborhood nitwits—a mop-haired video store geek (David Spade) and an hber-nerd momma's boy (Jon Heder) who's still delivering newspapers—to challenge a team of young bullies they catch tormenting some dorky kids at the local practice field. With Gus pitching strikes and hitting homer after homer while the other two make fools of themselves on the sidelines, the trio easily trounce their underage rivals, which spurs the mega-billionaire father of one of the rescued nerds (played with gusto by Jon Lovitz) to bankroll a tournament in which the trio challenge other similarly-abusive teams, leading to a succession of games rife with lots of silly, tasteless slapstick as the guys rack up win after win. Although almost everyone eventually learns to play well with others, director Dennis Dugan's The Benchwarmers suffers from entirely too many flatulence gags, gross-out jokes, and balls to the crotch. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include two audio commentaries (one by director Dennis Dugan; the other by costars David Spade and Jon Heder), “Mr. October: Behind the Scenes with Reggie Jackson” (8 min.), a “Nerds vs. Bullies” featurette (6 min.), a six-minute “Play Ball” featurette on America's “favorite” pastime, a “Who's On Deck” featurette with “Howie's” (Nick Swardson) greatest moments (3 min.), three minutes of deleted scenes, and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a forgettable comedy.] (F. Swietek)