Sadly Over-hyped

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It always amazes (and amuses) me when I read negative reviews of comedies like this one, describing them as 'stupid', 'silly' and so on. I can't believe anybody would watch a movie like this thinking they would get anything other than a ridiculous and intentionally dumb comedy. 'The Benchwarmers' knows what it wants to be and never tries to be anything else.This is one of those love/hate comedy films that some people with find hilarious and other will roll their eyes and switch off 20 minutes in. It will appeal mostly to those who enjoyed the likes of 'Napoleon Dynamite', and Jon Heder is once again hilarious in this film playing a character similar to Napoleon. I can understand why 'The Benchwarmers' isn't everyone's cup of tea, but anybody who enjoys light-hearted, harmless silly comedy will love this movie.

I liked this when it came out and I was a teen, but now that I'm older, I realize why it bombed so hard. It doesn't have a clear audience. The jokes and acting are cheesy and juvenile, and the main moral of the story is aimed to be inspirational, urging the audience to avoid bullying, help children get a chance to try and win, winning isn't everything, etc., as if it's a family movie. And yet, the movie is littered with mature jokes, crude humor, bad attitudes, and profanity— things no self-respecting parent would want to let their children partake of. It's got a handful of jokes in it, but its message, no matter its importance in real life, is lost.

I have to admit that comedies starring Rob Schneider, Adam Sandler, Nick Swardson and/or all the others from this group of "actors" are my guilty pleasure. They're usually so bad I can help myself but enjoy them. The Benchwarmers isn't an exception. These movies usually have a great starting idea (fighting bullies in this case), some good or great jokes and a lot of bad ones and terrible acting. The Benchwarmers adds a few pretty ladies, geek stuff and cool movie cars. Even though I rate these movies around 6/10, this one doesn't deserve more than 5/10 in my opinion. Acting performances are really bad and some of the jokes were a bit more annoying than usual. So there you have it - I like this kind of movies, but Benchwarmers are barely average. Too bad, it could have been much better with just a few small tweaks.

The Benchwarmers follows Gus, Richie and Clark as they play baseball to make up for missed opportunities in grade school due to them being bullied so much. So they form a team with just the three of them to compete against little league teams. I like Rob Schneider. I think most of his films are quite funny. This one is an exception. I felt it tried too hard to be funny and it just didn't come off. However, there still was a few funny moments. I think if they strayed away from fart, puke and crap jokes, maybe it could have been better. Because the characters were good, and the backbone of the story line could have been utilized more competently. The film is a usual Schneider film so if you don't like him, you probably won't like this. But if you do like him, you will probably like this. It is just plain, stupid humor. And plain, stupid humor isn't for everybody. Nick Swardson has, somewhat, of a funny role. Every time he was on camera he made me laugh. I was saddened to find he co-wrote the screenplay because he's a lot funnier than this. If it's coming off that I didn't like the film then let me correct that. I did like it, it was enjoyable to watch. There was just so much more they could have done with it if they had more competent writers.