First off- The Benchwarmers. It looks like Adam Sandler’s idea of putting his faded acting troupe together was a good one; The Benchwarmers is doing great, but not phenomenal, business. It is definitely doing better than Rob Schneider’s Deuce Bigalow or David Spade’s movie about the Has-Been child star. Maybe multiplying zeros together can produce more than just zero? (In Hollywood at least.)
Now let’s tackle the subject of Antonio Banderas’ movie Take The Lead, in which he plays a teacher who helps students by teaching them how to dance. This is the same sort of movie that you’ve seen countless times before. Lean on Me, Dangerous Minds, Sunset Park, yadda, yadda, yadda. Just about everyone in Hollywood has had a chance to play an inspiring teacher who takes over a class or team in an inner city school and turns a rowdy bunch of screwups into complete and total winners.
While I was certain that whoever greenlit this project must have been out of his or her mind, it appears that I am the one who was out of step with America; this movie, which was probably made with the tiniest of budgets appears to be a solid earner, grossing well over twenty million dollars in a few short weeks. Perhaps people just like these sorts of films, regardless of whether they use well worn storylines. In any case, let’s just hope that Steven Seagal doesn’t get any ideas and make a film in which he uses Buddhist principals and martial arts to make a group of inner city school kids succeed.
You’ve got to feel sorry for Adam Sandler. (Well, despite the fact that his bank account is probably a thousand times larger than the average person’s…) He’s getting a bit too old to play the sort of roles that he used to play way back when and his Saturday Night Live buddies have proven that they can no longer carry the movies he creates for them on their own. This predicament would seem to spell disaster for his Happy Madison (or is it Billy Gilmore?) production company, but Mr. Sandler seems to have a couple of backup plans.
While the jury is still out on Mr. Sandler’s decision to take on more mature films for himself, our focus this week is on his other plan; if your Saturday Night Live friends can no longer get enough people into the theaters individually, why not throw them all together into one movie? Throw in the latest “it” guy who happened to be in an overrated film that made more money than it deserved and you get Adam Sandler’s Benchwarmers. Headlined by SNL alumni David Spade, Rob Schneider and Jon Lovitz and the new “It” guy Jon Heder, Benchwarmers is a classic Adam Sandler film featuring underdogs who are tired of getting stepped on by the “cool kids”.
I haven’t seen the film, but I can already imagine what happens in it; there’s probably a scene in which an older woman (through a colossal misunderstanding) engages in sexual intercourse with one of the younger men. Another scene probably features one of the kids doing something socially unacceptable and just as he’s about to get ripped by his buddies for it, one of the older guys steps in to declare the activity totally cool and worthy of respect. If Rob Schneider wasn’t already headlining the movie, I’d swear that he’d be seen off to the side providing encouragement as the legendary “You can do it!” guy.
While I think that Adam Sandler is to be commended for carefully selecting his projects and mostly moving on to making films that are mostly age appropriate for himself, I’m not sure what to think about him permitting his SNL buddies to make the types of films that they should have left behind so long ago. It only looks more glaring when we see them matched up with the likes of Jon Heder, who is at least fifteen years younger than they are and is still young enough to be making such goofy films and getting away with it. It almost makes the rest of the cast seem even more pathetic to still be making such films. But only time will tell whether America will embrace or reject these Benchwarmers. Will it soar like The Waterboy or sink like Grandma’s Boy? We’ll know soon enough.
Every so often a movie is released that makes us wonder what exactly the people involved were thinking. These movies are so bad that it should have been evident from the very beginning that nothing good would come out of pursuing the project. This past week we saw a classic case of greenlight insanity- Basic Instinct 2.
The original Basic Instinct was pretty much a run of the mill thriller and should have been mostly ignored way back in 1992. But the director decided to shine a light up Sharon Stone’s dress during the interrogation scene and the rest was history. Ms. Stone became a huge star and audiences flocked to see what all the fuss was about. (Most of the tickets were probably sold to horn dogs too embarrassed to be seen at a XXX theater.) Just about every television show on the air at the time spoofed the now infamous scene for a cheap laugh.
So 14 years later, we should have been able to breath a sigh of relief, secure in the knowledge that way too much time had passed for anyone to even consider making a sequel. With Sharon Stone getting close to being eligible for an AARP membership and Michael Douglas firmly in the Lark Motorized Scooter demographic, Basic Instinct 2 seemed like a ridiculous and far fetched possibility. Obviously, this means that it had to be made.
With Michael Douglas way too old to play a convincing partner, even for Ms. Stone, the filmmakers chose not to bring him back. (Although he might have been murdered at the end of the first film- maybe.) Since the only thing that seemed to captivate audiences from the first movie is probably something that nobody would really want to see again, it is unclear to me how they thought they could get another feature length film made. And how could anyone possibly think that this project could possibly be a success as a theatrical release? (Maybe the project could have worked as a Direct to DVD release or Skinemax cheapie… maybe.)
With nothing new to show and no real new ground to cover, Basic Instinct 2 hit the movie screens of America with a thud. At this point, it looks doubtful that they’ll even make enough money to cover Sharon Stone’s reported $14 million salary. Perhaps they should have just flushed all of that money down the toilet; it probably would have been cheaper for them in the long run.
