Once upon a time I made this move called The Sandlot. Yeah, I know it was good. I’m the guy who made the piece of shit remember? It was about a group of retarded children who played baseball. They were a really tight group of friends and they played all summer long. One kid was especially good at baseball, so he was King of the baseball retards. And they ALL looked up to the biggest baseball tard of all: Babe Ruth. I don’t know how many consecutive summers this went on for, but my movie took place during “the summer they would never forget.”
You see, everything changes when a new kid moves into town. And the deal with this kid is that his mommy loves him, which makes his ass fair game for every foot in town. This kid is so goddamn clueless that he constantly needs the baseball retards to explain everyday things to him like s’mores, how to throw stuff, and the difference between in-holes and out-holes. It’s like someone ate his brain, threw it back up, and put it back together with old rubber cement. Even his step-dad slams his face with a curve-ball first chance he gets. Oh yeah, he has a step-dad, and this step-dad of his just happens to have a cherished baseball signed by none other than Babe Ruth. Oh, brother! Some shit’s gonna go down!
None of this would matter except King Retard feels sorry for the kid and invites him to play ball with his buddies out at the sandlot. The kid, who would hang out with a lit stick of poo if it asked him to, cannot say yes because he’s incapable of speaking without wetting himself at the same time.
King Retard s-l-o-w-l-y helps Prince Retard change pants, and they hit the sandlot where a motley crew of baseball retards await. One by one, King Retard introduces them to The Prince. And just like in the Mafia, they all have nicknames relating to some stupid thing they do, which they do for us as soon as they possibly can. So when King Retard says, “This one’s Yeah Yeah,” Yeah Yeah says, “Yeah Yeah.” Get it? It doesn’t matter. The only important thing to know here is that one of the kids is fat. And in that special place where we invent our own good version of the crappy movie we’re watching (or filming), Fat Kid is the star of the show, second only to Goofy Kid with Glasses, who lusts after a hot high school girl because he is slightly less retarded than his homeboys, although he will occasionally repeat an extremely long version of the word “forever”. When this happens, the I Repeat Everything My Big Brother Just Said kid has to hit him in the neck. Otherwise he’ll never stop and the word will kill him.
Anyway, Fat Kid is funny because genetics can be cruel AND kind. He plays “Catcher” and enjoys trash talking the “Batter” in an effort to distract him from the “Pitcher”. He’s generally rude and eats a lot. This was kind of an industry standard at the time. Speaking of which, the Pitcher Boy character is black. And “Being Black” is pretty much all his character gets to do. Hey, I didn’t write the script, I just pointed a camera at it. Don’t hate, or I’ll sick all my black friends on ya.
Oh man, guess what. Sooner or later shit’s gonna hit the fan and you won’t believe how that goes down! I’ll give you a hint: it involves baseball. I’ll give you another: Prince Retard is a world-class fuck-up.
The kids wanna play, but King Retard knocked the ball out of the park, which basically means it flew four feet and went into the neighbor’s fenced-in yard. The kids are all like, “Darn it you! Nows we can’ts play the sickballs no’mo!” But Prince Retard wants to be liked, so he pretends to think of a plan. While they wait, he skips home and grabs Step-dad’s badass, super-cherished Babe Ruth ball. Grinning like a smart koala bear’s impression of a dumb koala bear, he proclaims victory: “Look guys! I got another ball! We can still play Swimming! Right Guys?” To which Glasses Kid spits: “It’s BASEBALL! The game is called baseball you stupid more retarder than I am!”
It takes about two seconds for King Retard to knock this one out of the park too. Uh oh! There’s something on the other side of that fence that you do not want to mess with. It’s big, hairy, and it emits a deep guttural growl. Yessir, James Earl Jonz. Aw man, those kids just got blown from the mine field to the shark tank!
Or did they? One by one, they all come up with schemes for getting the Babe Ruth ball back. Some are better than others, but all of them suck. My personal favorite scheme is the one where they don’t do anything, leaving Prince Retard at the mercy of his step-dad who ends up being Dennis Leary at him until he graduates from high school (hint: it’s the Dennis Leary from Judgement Night).
But the plan they go with is a little less subtle than that. What they do is, hit Prince Retard with a rock until he’s unconscious. They take his twenty-pound ass and heave it over the fence. And while James Earl Jonz eats him, King Retard, who can run really fast, sneaks over and steals back the ball. Success!
They go downtown and hock the ball, splitting the winnings 50/50: fifty for King Retard and fifty for everyone else. Yeah Yeah says “No No” to this arrangement, but King Retard just rolls his baseball eyes and casually nudges him in front of a bus, ensuring that he will never walk or talk bad about the king again.
Baseball Retards use the money to buy weapons, of course. The King gets a gun, while the others who have less money buy switchblades. Except for Fat Kid, who buys dynamite only to do something funny with it that kills everyone but himself and King Retard. Cut to fifteen years later and King Tard is a kick-ass Minor League baseball player, while Fat Kid works as a commentator for all of his ball games. See that? That’s about the best ending money can ask for!
(three stars)