THE WATERBOY A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
HAPPY GILMORE's Adam Sandler is back in THE WATERBOY, an over-the-top slapstick movie. He plays a moron with a speech impediment in a movie full of such overdrawn characters.
As a waterboy named Bobby Boucher, who accidentally discovers his ability to tackle with the force of King Kong, Sandler delivers his lines with a heavy lisp that overlays a thick southern accent. The net result is a grating sound that, thankfully, causes half of his inane lines to be indecipherable.
Henry Winkler plays Coach Klein, a hopeless loser who reads "The Idiot's Guide to Coaching" as his bible. Coach Klein is the first person other than Bobby's mama to believe in him.
Kathy Bates hams up the part of Bobby's mama. They live together in a shack in the Louisiana Bayou, where Mama serves bite-sized baby alligators and large snakes for dinner. She keeps their mule in the house, and it drinks out of the toilet. If you are already laughing from these descriptions, you'll probably love the movie. To be fair, our audience full of twenty-year-olds certainly did.
The characters in the cliched script have an intelligence level inversely proportional to the intensity of their southern accents. If African Americans were parodied this much, they would be picketing the theaters, but the southern white hick is considered fair game for merciless ridicule.
The script by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler has all of the depth and originality of a failed pilot for a television sitcom. A character with crossed eyes is one of the many sight gags.
The team Bobby plays for is so poor that they have to share crotch protectors. Typical of the story's unoriginal jokes is the way that the football players taunt Bobby, they spit in the team's water. Most of the humor, however, is confined to poking fun at Bobby's speech handicap and calling him a moron for his reduced mental capacity.
Eventually Bobby's team, the CSLSU Mud Dogs, which basically has only a defense, makes its way to the big game in the Bourbon Bowl. (Oh, did I mention that the cheerleaders and the mascot drink bourbon during the games until they pass out on the sidelines?) At any rate, the big game does have some well-choreographed football scenes, the one thing director Frank Coraci gets right.
Let's hope Sandler's next movie includes Drew Barrymore as did his last, THE WEDDING SINGER. She saved that movie, but there was no one on hand to rescue him this time.
THE WATERBOY runs 1:28. It is rated PG-13 for mild profanity, brief male nudity and sexuality and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: www.InternetReviews.com
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