Cru Jones Society

 

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: April 7, 2006
Box Office Total: $59,843,754
Team Featured: The Benchwarmers 

“That’s horrible, baseball’s America‘s past time…that’s like saying you’ve never had apple pie. You’ve never had apple pie?” - Gus

Jackie Robinson opened up the game of baseball for everyone. Unfortunately some people cannot move beyond the cliques of high school and still do their best to not let others play. Luckily there are people willing to stand up for the losers, misfits, and runts.

Plot Synopsis

Clark (Jon Heder) is an adult, supposedly, who lives with his mom, doesn’t drive, always wears a helmet, and has a paper route; Richie (David Spade) is another supposed adult who works at a video store and takes care of his agoraphobic brother; Gus (Rob Schneider) is an adult with a landscaping business who is friends with Clark and Richie and will stand up for people getting picked on.

These three men rescue some dweeby kids who get picked on by a local little league team. They then challenge the team to a game and we see Clark and Richie appear to have never thrown, caught, or batted a ball in their lives. While Gus appears to be an all star, at least by company softball standards. The little league team gets pwnd, as Gus does nothing but hit home runs and strikes out every kid he faces.

A dad (Craig Kilborn) of one of the kids hears about what happens and gets the other overly aggressive, can’t move past high school dads riled up. They become increasingly angry over the fact that three dorks are actually standing up to them. Meanwhile a childhood nerd turned billionaire with nothing better to do (Jon Lovitz) is impressed with Gus, Clark, and Richie and decides to exploit them to help his own dweeby son.

Lovitz develops a round robin tournament in which the local little league teams will play Gus, Clark, and Richie, now affectionately known as the Benchwarmers, like the name of the movie. The winning team will get a new state of the art stadium donated by Lovitz.

In order to take all the work off of Gus Lovitz calls his old friend Reggie Jackson to help teach the guys how to play. This involves improving running skills by door bell ditching; hot potatoes to improve catch and release; and to be batters, you guessed it, riding around the back of a pickup and taking out mailboxes. There really is nothing like watching Reggie Jackson act like a mad man and swing away at mailboxes.

The Benchwarmers make it to the final game; imagine that, against Craig Kilborn’s team. But wait, there is a shocking scandal. Turns out Gus wasn’t the nerdy un-athletic kid he claimed to be. In fact he was the biggest bully in his school, even causing one kid to wind up in an institute. But despite the fact that he has changed his ways since high school, unlike the rest of the douche bags in town, everyone turns against him. Until he apologizes to the institutionalized kid who make a speech to everyone pointing out Gus’ goodness. And everyone forgives him.

Gus, Clark, and Richie don’t play the final game, instead the new Benchwarmers, made up of all the dweeby kids who weren’t allowed on to the real little league teams, play. Apparently there is not a mercy rule as the new Benchwarmers are losing 42 to 0 going into the bottom of the 6^th. But we see they are having fun. The other team’s pitcher likes their attitude, and is pissed at his dad the coach, and much like the kid in Bad News Bears decided to defy his coach. He throws a pitch that Lovitz’s son can easily put into play and the rest of the team takes a cue and does their worst at bobbling the ball so the kid gets an in the park homer.

In the end all the kids are friends as they share pizza at the local Pizza Hut and the adult nerds hang Kilborn by his boxers on a fence.

Treatment of Baseball/ Quality of Baseball Scenes

Much like Bad News Bears this movie consists of children playing baseball so the major league quality is lacking. But all the little league kids look as though they actually play little league and have for a few years, manly the pitchers. The children pitchers actually looked better with their wind up and delivery than Rob Schneider did, and that’s just sad on Schneider’s half.

There’s a lot of shenanigans going on like the final game of Rookie of the Year. At one point Gus’s hand is hurt so he can’t pitch. They put him in the outfield and surprise he can’t throw a ball in. He’s alternate idea? He pulls of his glove, sticks the ball in and punts it in. The ball stays in place defying physics and they get the final out.

Despite the lack of a mercy rule, they did have all the games going only to 6 innings. This was a nice little nod to real little league.

Annoying Romantic B-Story/ Stifling Spouse

We’re somehow supposed to believe Rob Schneider is married and his wife wants to procreate with him. She just wants to have a kid, but he is worried that the kid will end up getting picked on, he doesn’t just come out and say this but comes up with excuses as to why he can’t pork whenever she is ready to. This stuff is only in the movie to drag out the importance of apologizing and lifting the weight of guilt, and to stretch the movie into a decent running time.

There is also the Pizza Hut waitress that Spade lusts after. She is way to good looking to be into a guy with hair like Prince Adam and a molestache, but for some reason she is and he does his best impress her ultimately winning her in the end. Again more filler to stretch the movie.

Final Thoughts

The characters in this movie are incredibly cartoony in the fact that such people do not exist in real life. I find it hard to believe there are adults this pathetic at baseball. These guys seriously made Smalls at the beginning of the Sandlot look like Hank Aaron. The douche bags who can’t move past high school I can understand, but not this exaggerated or this numerous. Nor can I buy so many people excited to watch adults beat a bunch of kids at baseball, even if it is 3 adults against 9 kids.

The message of treating everyone the way you want to be treated is very heavy handed and becomes very tiresome very quickly. I’m all for that, but we don’t need it hammered home this hard.

There is a lot of other random stupidity going on that I assume is supposedly funny if you’re a 12 or 13 year old boy. But when you’re 26 and reviewing the movie along side such greats as Mr. Baseball and Bull Durham these jokes fall flat and are just annoying. The only two that I enjoyed were Reggie Jackson hitting mailboxes and the birth certificate of the 30 year old ringer, which was a piece of paper with a current photo of the player in the center. Above the photo written in green crayon was, “I am 12.”

At least it was only 80 minutes long.

Ruling from the Scorer: Fabled centuple play.

lee.s.hart@crujonessociety.com