‘The Sandlot’ (PG)

"The Sandlot," a bonding-via-baseball movie for 12-year-old boys, has enough dog slobber, curdled hurl and toe-jam jokes to keep its target audience amused. Older kids and overgrown ones too probably will notice that nothing much ever happens in this belabored suburban variation on "The Little Rascals."

Set in the '60s, the neighborhood comedy's primary strength -- unless you haven't had enough of soundtracks featuring "Tequila" -- is that it's inoffensive. Unless you're a girl. If you want to get these prepubescents riled, just stick out your scrawny little chest and yell, "You play ball like a girl." Those are, of course, fighting words that lead to a ballgame between the sandlot regulars and a snotty Little League team (a digression that has nothing whatever to do with the main story line).

The movie, which features a "Wonder Years"-style narrative voice-over, focuses initially on 11-year-old Scott (Tom Guiry), a shy new kid in the tract whose new stepfather hasn't got time to play catch with him. Scott tries to ease into the ongoing game at the sandlot, where he meets with jeers of "You throw like a girl" from seven of the players. The eighth, Benny (Mike Vitar), is a superb athlete and real nice guy who takes Scott under his wing. "Stop thinking and have fun," says Benny, thereby turning Scott from wuss to slammer in just one play.

Scott is accepted by his peers and settles into a long -- and I do mean long -- idyllic summer of playing ball with time out for staring awestruck at fireworks on the Fourth of July. Their only worry is the Beast, a snarling mastiff who claims any balls that fly over the junkyard fence. Unfortunately for Scott, one is a ball that he's borrowed from his stepfather's trophy case. "It's signed by some lady named Babe Ruth," says Scott, receiving a chorus of groans from the assembled gang of fat, four-eyed, freckled and otherwise diverse suburbanites.

Using various homemade devices, the boys attempt to retrieve the chewed, sputum-covered ball from the Beast, whose history is recounted in a contrived black-and-white spoof of what appears to be early Soviet cinema. Or something. The Beast, who turns out to be smaller than Beethoven, belongs not to a mean old man but to a blind former ballplayer (James Earl Jones), who would have perked up things some if he'd had a larger role as, say, the kids' coach.

David Mickey Evans, the producer-writer of the child-abuse fantasy "Radio Flyer," is making his directorial debut with "The Sandlot," which he wrote with Robert Gunter. While he has neither a flair for comic pacing nor directing children, at least Evans is not making another movie about battered children committing suicide in little red wagons. This corny "Field of Dreams" won't scare the niblets.