Last night I went out and saw the movie The Benchwarmers, featuring an All-Star cast from comedy’s b-list.  This included the likes of Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jon Heder, Jon Lovitz and Tim Meadows in a Happy Madison production, Adam Sandler’s production company. Now with all those ducks lined up in a row you’d figure this movie would be a stinker, and in fact it was. Now going into a movie like this I didn’t have high expectations, but I found I was letdown by some of the humour in this movie.  From a movie like this you expect lots of gross out jokes, physical humour and stupid one-liners and the movie had that.

Where I found the movie lacked, and this is what would have made it a good movie, was clever nerd humour.  The whole movie revolved around the theme of a couple of older nerds sticking up to all the jocks that tormented them growing up and making a statement for all nerdkind.  Now with a premise like that you would figure the movie would have an upper crust layer of humour that would fly over a lot of people’s heads.  This method of writing is used all the time in shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy, where there are certain jokes that only hardcore geeks and nerds actually get.  This movie didn’t have anything like that. With a movie featuring lots of characters as nerds, it simply relied on stereotypes.  Things like nerds love Star Wars. Jon Lovitz character was the nerd who used his smarts to become a billionaire. His mansion was loaded with Star Wars paraphernalia because he could afford anything.  Funny huh?  That was it.  There were a bunch of Star Wars mentions, but none of them were any more clever then calling a short guy Yoda.  That just simply doesn’t cut it.  Kevin Smith writes his movies and there are always clever Star Wars jokes embedded into the dialogue.  That’s why his work is so popular among the geek and nerd population.  There are jokes that will only be funny to a certain part of the audience, and that’s okay.  There were also plenty of other nerd references to Star Trek, goths etc. but none of it was actually funny. It’s really a shame. I think there might have been a half decent movie to be made from the stupid premise they laid out.

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