By Geno McGahee
In 2006, BENCHWARMERS was released, featuring established comedic actors that were still in their relative prime, including David Spade, Rob Schneider and Jon Heder. It wasn’t a great movie, but it was amusing enough to watch and had a fair share of laughs to be had. Now, for some reason, in 2019, we have returned to the story or at least the title in BENCHWARMERS 2: BREAKING BALLS.
Ben McGrath (Chris Klein) is a baseball star with a big bulge. They focus on the bulge a lot in the beginning and you know that he’s going to take a shot in the nuts. Well, when a comedy starts immediately with the cheapest sort of laugh, you know you may be in for a bad one and I sure was. McGrath is nailed in the balls with the baseball and leaves the game forever to pursue law.
After failing to land a job at any good firm, McGrath lands a job with Stenhouse’s (Lochlyn Munro) firm, widely considered the best around. He discovers that he was only hired to help with the softball team and when he fails at that, he is quickly fired. He later meets Mel Carmichael (Jon Lovitz), the only returning character from the original film. Lovitz can be good but he can also be unfunny and annoying and that is the Lovitz we get in this film. I don’t think his heart was in this and I can’t blame him for that.
Mel has inherited a small law firm and hires McGrath which also comes with a job to manage his company softball team, which features a group of unrealistic characters that are so over the top it’s hard to get into. As I watched this, I kept thinking of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION 2: COUSIN EDDIE’S ISLAND ADVENTURE. That was the worst movie that I have ever seen in my entire life and this film had sort of the same feel and some of the comedic approach, which is non-comedic cringe worthy shit.
Ben meets Annie (Chelsey Reist), another attorney at the firm, and the two are going head to head with Stenhouse’s firm over a small town that is facing imminent domain. They are putting a sewage plant into the town and chasing out the townies. I think the sewage plant thing was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t. I keep wondering why I watched this to the end.
The team of misfits lose a few games and then Mel talks about the Benchwarmers team from the 2006 film. It’s the first real reference to the original movie and it’s a stretch. This leads to the team officially changing their name to the Benchwarmers and they start winning while they fight in the courtroom as well. Ben finds out that Annie used to be a great softball pitcher but she’s given it up for her own personal reasons, much like Ben had.
The Benchwarmers head into the finals against Stenhouse’s team with the added incentive that the winner gets what they want from the court case, with the Benchwarmers obviously winning and Stenhouse getting fucked in the end.
BENCHWARMERS 2: BREAKING BALLS is a complete mess that is very unfunny overall, but it did have a moment or two. Reist was very good in this and Munro did everything he could to make this work, but there just wasn’t anything to work with. When Reist called Munro “Butt Boy”, I did laugh. It was funny to see her turn into an asshole shit-talker while playing the game. Chris Klein of AMERICAN PIE fame just doesn’t have it as a comedic lead. He worked as a side character in AMERICAN PIE, but as a lead, he is just too monotone and boring. He didn’t work for this at all.
So, for all the people that were clamoring for a sequel to the 2006 film “BENCHWARMERS”, you won’t be happy…all 4 of you. Those that liked the original and hoped for some of the charm in this follow up, you will be disappointed. This is just a bad film that is nearly impossible to get through even with the notable attempts to make it work from Reist and Munro.
