Normally I don't do too much laughing when I'm at home watching movies. I laugh, but not completely out loud, especially if it's only one other person with me. Well, this wasn't the case when my date brought over The Benchwarmers for our first night alone together. What started out as a typical, planned makeout, turned into us both completely focused on the movie.

This is definitely a different type of movie however. This isn't your typical movie, everyone is welcome type of comedy. This is painfully stupid comedy at it's finest. If you liked Zoolander, then you'll love this movie. You have to truly enjoy the stupider points of life and with a cast as powerful as this one, how can you go wrong!

The Cast

Rob Schneider .... Gus

David Spade .... Richie

Jon Heder .... Clark

Jon Lovitz .... Mel
Craig Kilborn .... Jerry

Molly Sims .... Liz
Tim Meadows .... Wayne
Nick Swardson .... Howie

Erinn Bartlett .... Salad Girl/Sarah

Amaury Nolasco .... Carlos
Bill Romanowski .... Karl
Sean Salisbury .... Brad

Matt Weinberg .... Kyle

John Farley .... Swimmer Boy
Reggie Jackson .... Himself

The Plot
In order to keep from ruining the movie, I will give only minimal information about the movie in order to preserve it's integrity, as I always do. If you are looking for a more in depth review that covers every aspect of the movie, so that you can live vicariously through the reviewer, this is not your review... so move along little donkey... but if you want just enough to make an informed decision... please carry on...

Essentially the movie is about several adults that witness they nerdy kids getting picked on day after day, and remember back to their own youth, when they were also harassed. After watching the nerdy kids get tossed off the baseball field, they realize that it's time to do something about it. Gus, Richie, and Clark (Dave Schneider, David Spade, and Jon Heder) decide that they are going to play the local team for use of the field, beating them horribly with the play of Gus, who hits non stop home runs.

Slowly the word gets out about what they are trying to do and they obtain sponsorship from one of the wealthiest nerds in the area. He forms a challenge in which the winner of competition would end up with a stadium, the likes of a major league stadium. This was just enough to get the little league teams to accept the challenge, after all, how hard could it be to beat a team of three former nerds? Right?

Team after team, the benchwarmers take down their opponents, developing a huge following along the way. Then drama hits and it changes everything completely.

The Acting
The acting itself was pretty horrible. I would say that David Spade is truly the genius of the movie that made it all come together. The combination of actors was fairly incompatible and a bit forced. The addition of Jon Heder, was merely because of his popularity with a similar character on Napoleon Dynamite, but it doesn't ring true in this movie.

The dialogue seemed extremely awkward at times between the characters, and didn't appear as if they truly knew each other or felt comfortable together. When the actors were alone, solo acting, they were at their prime, but once you added another actor into the mix is when everything fell apart. This is a shame considering the amount of talent in the movie. Most everyone on the cast is a major star, including an appearance from hall of famer Reggie Jackson, who plays a hilarious role in the movie's development.

The comedy
The comedy itself was pretty hilarious. I laughed so hard throughout this movie, with little letting up. The problem was that the dialogue, although funny was so forced that it had no real flow to it and kinda killed a few of the jokes that could have been substantially funnier if it had been brought in correctly.

A lot of the comedy in the movie comes at you quickly and is definitely unexpected. You think that one thing is going to happen and then BAM you get hit by something completely different. The funniest part of the whole movie is Richie's brother who is afraid of the sun. The whole movie they cut to him trying to fight his fear of the sun with absolute hilarity.

Personally, I love the comedy of this movie, and so did my date. We were both laughing so hard that my roommate had to come downstairs to tell us to calm down a bit before we woke up the kids.

Final Thoughts
Very well thought out movie! The comedy in it was superb, it's just unfortunate that the characters didn't mesh together all of the time, and the dialogue was somewhat forced. But with all of the great laughs, the poor dialogue in parts was easily overcome and didn't really take away from the movie all that much.

Basically it comes down to personal preference. If you are able to step outside of yourself and just sit down and enjoy the simple things in life, then you are going to love this movie. But if you are stuck in a shell, and won't just let yourself be 'silly' for a while, then you are probably going to hate this movie.

But in my book... this is going down as one of my absolute favorites.

Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: Funny Movie
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Script