The Benchwarmers

"Gags about boogers, flatulence, projectile vomiting and "titty twisting" are batted about like so many foul balls in "The Benchwarmers," a minor-league comedy about three adult dweebs who seek redemption of some sort by playing and defeating Little League teams in tournament play. Pic wasn't prescreened for critics, perhaps because Sony figured this blooper was aimed at people who don't read reviews (or much of anything else). But the film opened to $20.5 million, suggesting that this guilty pleasure laff riot for young male auds may have broader appeal..."

"Think revenge of the baseball nerds, plus flatulence, if you must think of "The Benchwarmers." Directed, so to speak, by Dennis Dugan, a man who certainly knows how to show Sony consumer products off to advantage, this yuck-fest stars the hard-working Rob Schneider as Gus, a landscape gardener with a mighty baseball swing, and two dumb-and-dumber sidekicks: dumb in this case being Richie, a 39-year-old virgin with a Prince Valiant hairdo, played by David Spade with his characteristic insolent laziness; dumber being Clark, a booger-eating mama's boy played by Jon Heder, using up the last of the 15 minutes he squeezed out of "Napoleon Dynamite"..."

"No matter how short Rob Schneider movies are, there is nothing more excruciating than having to sit through one. The fact that he is able to keep making films shows us that having Adam Sandler as your friend is a good thing. If it weren't for him producing everything Schneider decided to do, perhaps we as an audience wouldn't be subjected to this torture every few months..."

"As part of the oning culture war between aesthetes and vulgarians, the mind and the body, the snooty arbiters of taste and the roaring, belching marketplace, critics were not granted a preview screening of ''The Benchwarmers." This total bypass of the organs of discrimination is a growing phenomenon; the studios (Sony, in this case) apparently think it worthwhile to sacrifice the publicity of a few reviews for the chance to make some money before audiences discover how terrible a given movie is..."