Better Never Than Late on "Beer League"

I am currently in a movie watching mood, and to be more specific, I have been trying to watch sports comedies. I like most sports movies. And if I don't like them, I can usually find something enjoyable during a bad one. I played sports growing up, I'm a runner now and I coach feeder basketball. I like to be involved and around sports in general. So, when scrolling on Prime the other day I happened to notice a movie that I have never heard of before called "Beer League".

I had pretty recently watched the movie "Dirty Work". I adore that movie. I always liked Norm MacDonald and his style of comedy. "Dirty Work" felt like his magnum opus and it will always hold a special place for me. Artie Lange happens to play his best friend in that movie. I mention Lange because he is the lead of "Beer League". I have always been kind of leery of Lange. I know he has, or had, drug issues and he always tended to fall off the wagon every few years. He also does pretty blue humor that I determine to be very problematic. In "Dirty Work" he was fine, but that was because he was doing MacDonald's style of humor. In "Beer League" they let him loose and let him do his own thing. I'm not much for the argument that certain movies could or could not be made from the past in current time. "Beer League" came out in 2006, but I'm glad that movies like this are a thing of the past.

This movie is bad and offensive and crude and very poorly made. I played softball up until about four years ago. It was fine. Some people took it a little too seriously while others were just there to have a good time. I don't drink or smoke, so that aspect never appealed to me. But I always loved to play baseball as a kid, and softball let me hang on to that a little bit longer. The softball they portray in this movie is crass and stupid. There's an entire montage where the team has practice. We never practiced or even thought about practicing. The shit talk in this movie was offensive. I'm not saying that people didn't talk in the leagues I played in, but we never used problematic language or said offensive stuff every other word. It was more in jest or playful. Some of the words they use in this movie made me cringe when I heard them say it. And it happened way too often for my taste. I would hope that some of the stuff they said , when they wrote it down, would have double checked it and decided to try and find a different way to get the joke off. They didn't though. They took the lazy route and just said some foul stuff. And I'm not trying to be the language police, but some words just need to disappear forever. Other than the language, the movie was just bad. It wasn't funny. It was poorly written, obviously. The actors seemed uninterested in their dialogue. The comedians they got to play random characters are bad comedians. Artie Lange is not a leading man. Not in the least. I felt bad for the actresses in this movie. I understand that a job is a job, but their roles were so underwritten and, quite frankly, demeaning. The bachelor party scene was tough to watch and pretty disgusting. This is just a bad, bad movie. And like I said before, even in bad sports movies I can find something to enjoy. That was not the case here. I have pretty bad OCD, so I decided that I had to finish this movie, but there was nothing redeeming about it. Sure, I got to see a young Jerry Minor, Joe Lo Truglio and Tina Fey, but they were underutilized. Hell, Tina Fey was in one scene and had one line and she was gone.

"Beer League" is a bad, bad movie. I am writing this today to implore anyone that may want to watch this movie to tell them, don't. Don't waste your time. It is truly repugnant and just a bad movie. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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