A baseball buffoonery comedy, "The Benchwarmers" packs more pop than you'd expect from a film made up of former "Saturday Night Live" second-stringers.
At the same time, you won't miss much if you happen to sit this one out.
The movie takes the inherently funny concept of grown adults competing fiercely against children in sports, milks it for all it's worth, then runs it hard into the ground in the early innings. The movie frontloads its best gags to get you in a good mood, then plays smallball the rest of the way to maintain its dwindling lead.
Three grown nerds band together to form a barnstorming baseball team seeking to lay the smackdown on full-rostered youth squads.
Jon Heder, who shot to fame in "Napoleon Dynamite," is Clark, a hapless paper boy who can't hit or catch. ƒHe is such a loser that he erupts with fist-pumping excitement when his live-in mother text messages him that she'll be making macaroni for dinner.
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David Spade checks in as Richie, a goofy video store clerk with a bowl cut and an obsession with lesbian porn.
Gus (Rob Schneider), is blessed with a gorgeous wife and athletic skill, and he mows lawns for a living. He's the most confident of the trio, although Gus does think so little of himself that he gets his jollies humiliating 12-year-olds on the diamond.
They form a team called the Benchwarmers and enlist freakish multibillionaire über-dork Mel (Jon Lovitz) as their benefactor. The money guy stages a tournament and promises a state-of-the-art stadium to the winning squad. The site of the supremely self-assured Lovitz scooting through his nerd palace on a Segway Human Transporter is glorious to behold.
Heder, who seems to be the most gifted member of the cast, draws plenty of Napoleon Dynamite-style oddball laughs, but he's underused in favor of the more desperate Spade and Schneider.
The Benchwarmers see themselves as crusaders for social outcasts, and as their success grows, throngs of pocket protector-wearing, grade-school wedgie victims begin to tune in on the podcasts.
The baseball action is filled with thrown bats, misfired throws and, of course, multiple hits to the groin and head. And since it's a baseball comedy, you can be assured there's at least one joke regarding a player getting a hit then heading the wrong way on the basepaths.
Director Dennis Dugan has made some excellent Adam Sandler comedies. The Dugan-directed "Happy Gilmore" (1996) and "Big Daddy" (1999) are examples of impeccable comic timing and barely controlled lunacy that play as finely calibrated compositions of slapstick, verbal zingers and inexplicable bursts of weirdness.
For the first half-hour, Dugan's latest film is every bit as ragingly funny as his two calling cards, and it seems to outrun the inevitable falloff. Once the concept tires, the laughs fall off and the viewer is left stranded in scoring position.
"The Benchwarmers" succumbs to its fate as a Sandler comedy lacking Sandler, even in a gratuitous cameo he often gives in flicks starring his friends. Substituting Sandler with Schneider in the lead role is like filling your gas tank with urine instead of unleaded. Without a combustible central force to propel the vehicle forward, it sputters and dies.
At least "The Benchwarmers" goes down swinging.
● The Benchwarmers (**1/2)
Rated PG-13 for crude and suggestive humor, and for language. Starring Rob Schneider. Directed by Dennis Dugan. 80 minutes. Playing at Park Place, El Con, Century Park, Foothills, DeAnza, Desert Sky and Uptown.
