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Review: Length and verbosity sideline baseball drama ‘Benched’

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Dramatically speaking, the runners never advance in “Benched,” an overlong, talky comedy about two Little League coaches with decidedly different philosophies.

Adapted but insufficiently opened-up from the 2003 Off Broadway play “Rounding Third” by Richard Dresser, the two-hander stars John C. McGinley as Don, a blue collar drill sergeant-type who remains steadfast in his belief that there’s no crying in baseball.

Meanwhile, his new assistant coach, Michael (Garret Dillahunt), who, like Don, has a son on the team, takes a kinder, gentler, more supportive approach to the game and its young players, which eventually results in some big league head-butting.

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Unfortunately, the process that inevitably leads to Michael calling Don out on his bullying ways proves to be such a painfully prolonged process, tediously drawn out by another one of the latter’s puffed-chested pronouncements, that by the time he reaps what he sows, the audience is too tuckered-out to care.

While both actors play their parts convincingly, first-time feature directors Robert Deaton and George Flanigen, better known for their country music videos for Big & Rich, Reba McEntire and others, are less successful at extricating the vehicle from its stage-bound confines despite fleshing out the scenery with an actual baseball field populated by pint-sized characters facing off against an overworked score.

Filmed in Nashville several years ago, it isn’t really surprising that this poorly paced production has spent so long on the sidelines.

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‘Benched’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills

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