THE WATERBOY (Touchstone) Starring: Adam Sandler, Kathy Bates, Fairuza Balk, Henry Winkler, Jerry Reed. Screenplay: Adam Sandler and Tim Herlihy. Producers: Robert Simonds and Jack Giarraputo. Director: Frank Coraci. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes, adult humor) Running Time: 86 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
So much for Adam Sandler, "normal" guy. In THE WEDDING SINGER, it looked as though Sandler were trying to shrug off the infantile, silly-voiced persona he took from "Saturday Night Live" to BILLY MADISON and HAPPY GILMORE. While still fairly silly in its own way, THE WEDDING SINGER was a somewhat more mature, somewhat more clever vehicle for Sandler, and his first attempt at actual screen acting. In THE WATERBOY, Sandler is once again in infantile, silly-voiced rare form, the kind of character that strikes unholy terror in a critic's heart.
It would be a gross exaggeration to call THE WATERBOY a smart film, but it's funny in ways I didn't quite expect. Sandler plays a 31-year-old simpleton bayou boy named Bobby Boucher who still lives with his domineering Mama (Kathy Bates) and has been the University of Louisiana's water boy for 18 years. When U. of L.'s nasty Coach Beaulieu (Jerry Reed) finally fires Bobby, the hydrophilic lad hooks up with the hapless South Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs, led by jittery Coach Klein. Coach Klein inadvertently unleashes Bobby's inner linebacker when he encourages Bobby to defend himself against the taunting of team members, discovering in the process one of the greatest pass rushers in college football history. Thus are the Mud Dogs on their way to their greatest season -- and, naturally, a showdown with the University of Louisiana -- provided they can keep over-protective Mama from finding out her baby boy is playing "the foosball."
The opening minutes of THE WATERBOY don't hold out much hope for anything beyond 12-year-old comic sensibilities. Sight gags predominate, from a football hitting Bobby in the head, to pratfalls over a water cooler, to Sandler motoring about on a riding lawn mower. Yawn-inspiring running jokes involve a perpetually drunken cheerleading squad, a pair of dim-witted die-hard fans (Clint Howard and Allen Covert), and an assistant coach (Blake Clark) who speaks in an incomprehensible accent. A few giggles leak out of the predictabe sophomorism, while Sandler's stuttering, soft-spoken variation on Cajun Man threatens to wear out his welcome very early on.
Then something strange happens some time after the fourth or fifth reference to Bobby's backwater, snake-and-squirrel-eating background. The dialogue starts getting sharper, including Bobby's bizarre cover story to Mama for his football-related bruises. Sandler starts getting more endearingly innocent rather than acting like an oblivious moron. And the sight gags start getting funnier, perhaps as much related to a build-up of good will as to any change in approach. The incongruous presence of Bates and Winker (the latter sporting decidedly un-Fonzie-esque love handles) certainly helps, but there's something about the writing in THE WATERBOY that kept sneaking up on me, delivering a left-field laugh at times when I was expecting an obvious bit of slapstick idiocy.
Many people probably associate Sandler with moron comedy in the Ernest/Pauly Shore/Carrot Top vein, perhaps without having seen any of his films. He and frequent writing partner Tim Herlihy are considerably more sly than that. They've learned a few lessons in grown-up comedy from THE WEDDING SINGER, and bring that sensibility to the lower common denominator audience targeted with THE WATERBOY. They certainly miss the target plenty of times -- Rob Schneider's extended cameo gets more insufferable every time he appears -- but they also don't fire at the same stupid target over and over again. Between the lethargic opening and the who-cares romance between Sandler and bad girl Fairuza Balk, THE WATERBOY offers goofy entertainment. It appears Sandler doesn't have to be "normal" to be funny.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 cool waters: 6.
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