Review of The Benchwarmers (2006) by Jonathan Y — 06 Mar 2009

I'm sure that somewhere in the planning stages, the triple-threat teamup of Schneider, Spade and Heder in a lowbrow baseball comedy must have sounded like a sure-fire recipe for comedy gold. Unfortunately, the finished product isn't so much lowbrow as it is lazy, with its nerds-vs-jocks storyline clumsily dishing up the most obvious, tired "jokes" this side of a gaggle of not-very-bright ten year olds trying desperately to be funny.

Gross-outs figure heavily into the mix, though director Dugan and his scriptwriters continually make the incorrect assumption that simply having somebody fart or puke constitutes a punchline. The acting ranges from personable (Spade and Schneider actually dial it back a bit and try for "appealingly obnoxious" versus just "obnoxious") to downright terrible, with Heder in particular responsible for many of the least-funny moments.

Ultimately this whole enterprise feels like the work of people with only a rudimentary grasp of what's funny trying too hard to do some bizarre third-grade imitation of humor. Why bother with "The Benchwarmers" when there are so many legitimately entertaining baseball comedies out there?