听 Adam Sandler wore his producer's hat for The Benchwarmers, an "identikit comedy" starring Rob Schneider, Jon Heder and David Spade as three geeks who form their own baseball team. Gags involving projectile vomiting, impromptu farting and light-hearted homophobia all ensured it would get a hammering by the critics and bring adolescent moviegoers flocking. At least in America anyway...
The Pitch
There's no getting past the fact that baseball just isn't that compelling to a British audience. Schneider gets disturbingly misty-eyed in his attempt to explain the appeal of the sport in the featurette Play Ball. "It's part of our language," he insists, "It's so entwined in our cultural fabric." He gushes even more over some bloke called Reggie Jackson in the Mr October featurette. But even Reggie can't take his drooling adulation. "He just went on and on," says the apparent baseball legend, "He couldn't ask enough questions."
Spade revisits a tormented childhood in Nerds Vs Bullies where he admits to having his lunch money taken on an almost daily basis. In contrast, Heder reckons he had quite an easy time at school (despite being cast as ubergeek Napoleon Dynamite). "I don't think I was that bullied," he says, "I just kind of kept to myself." One guy who definitely gets more than his share of wedgies and flushies is Howie (played by Nick Swardson). He gets his own outtakes reel highlighting some of the character's dumbest (but not necessarily his funniest) moments. "For many years," he states, "I thought the sun was a monster."
Relegated
Sadly yet predictably there are no laughs in five deleted scenes. A couple of them are focussed on Gus's hapless (Schneider) attempts to woo bombshell Liz (Molly Sims) and another sees Reggie Jackson (living legend apparently) striking suburban mailboxes with his baseball bat. We suppose you have to be American to really appreciate the hilarity. Hidden at the top of this menu is an Easter egg that hears Jon Lovitz murdering the US national anthem.
Director Dennis Dugan warns us he'll spend most of the time talking about how "great" his actors are in his commentary for the film. He isn't lying. "I included more of their ad-libs in this movie than any I've made before," he says. On top of that, he reveals that Schneider trained for eight weeks in the run-up to the production and became quite a decent ball player. We have to take his word for it though. According to Spade, Schneider "had a thing" on the day he and Heder turned up to record the actors' commentary. You can hardly blame the man though as this duo waffle endlessly and without consequence between lame wisecracks. "We borrow a lot out of Shakespeare for this film," remarks Spade, and "Hooray for farts". Ironically, just like the film, the extras on this DVD are 90 percent gas.
EXTRA FEATURES
