The Benchwarmers is an avant garde film drenched in existential dogma. Though mainstream moviegoers will find the subject matter daunting, rewards await those willing to set aside their bourgeois philosophies and wallow in the film's epistemological ruminations.
Benchwarmers is a physically static film in the tradition of My Dinner With Andre. The entire movie takes place at a bus stop, where three men in various stages of emotional crisis sit on the bench and discuss the nature of being. The most desperate of the three, Gus Heidegger (Rob Schneider) challenges the other two to explain why suicide is not the best response to this world's absurdities. Richie and Kurt (Jon Heder and David Spade) scramble to convince Gus to stay on the bench and away from the grill of a moving bus.
Richie takes the intellectual high-road, offering "Existence precedes essence. Man must encounter himself, surge up in the world, and define himself afterwards." Kurt provides perfect counterpoint to Richie's arguments, skewing in a tawdry direction. He gets Gus to pull on his finger as he passes gas and announces "I stink, therefore I am."
While Kurt's levity lifts Gus's spirits, it hardens Richie's determination to produce the intellectual arguments for existence. He offers that Gus' despair is a natural response to the awareness of death -- man's inescapable finitude. The only solution, he posits, is to find meaning within the meaninglessness. Kurt counters that they should find meaning at a good happy hour, preferably one where the frisky chicks hang out. "Who's up for Trader Vic's?" he asks, "We'll get a pitcher of Mai Tais and hook up with some young legal secretaries who aren't afraid of the pu pu platter."
Richie berates Kurt for turning his back on contemplation. "Contemplation," Kurt responds, "That's Gus's problem. He contemplates Princess Leia while he's home alone doing the Han Solo. He's the Jay Leno of sex-a boring monologue every night." Richie and Kurt's clash of ideas becomes the centerpiece of Benchwarmers, and the main reason why this film is so watchable. While Richie accuses Kurt of clinging to the residue of Aristotelian/Kantian cognitivism, Kurt points out that by morning he'll be clinging to somebody's ex-girlfriend. Gus steps in and settles the feud, creating his own reality, one where he stops grasping for answers, opting instead to quaff enough pina coladas to forget the question.
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