It's probably damning the picture with faint praise to say "The Waterboy" may well the best Adam Sandler movie ever. Certainly, for those who can't abide Sandler even in the smallest doses, that statement won't entice them into the theater. But this gleefully silly movie may go a long way toward swinging the votes of those who are still undecided about the former "Saturday Night Live" star; art it ain't, but "The Waterboy" is pure, undiluted Sandler, in the kind of role only he could pull off. The movie also owes much of its success to divinely hammy Kathy Bates and the spooky-sexy Fairuza Balk, a zesty and offbeat love interest. "The Waterboy" is little more than a live-action cartoon, but it's a pretty funny one. Sandler plays Bobby Boucher, a dim but devoted "water distribution enginner" for the Mud Dogs, a twelfth-rate college football team, who ends up on the playing field after channelling his years of repressed rage into some spectacular tackles. Smothering Mama (Bates) will hear nothing of her baby playing "foosball," as she calls it, so Bobby must keep his gridiron fame a secret from her. You see, when Mama has to deal with adversity, she gets "the brain pain" and Bobby loves her much too much to ever hurt her. The screenplay by Sandler and Tim Herlihy is full of the kind of twisted little jokes that turn a passable comedy into a good one. The Mud Dogs' cheerleaders, for example, have become so depressed by the team's 40-game losing streak they now spend their time drinking heavily on the sidelines. And when over-protective Mama tries to scare just-out-of-jail Vicki (Balk) away from Bobby by remarking that her 31-year-old son still wears Deputy Dawg pajamas, Vicki replies, in an aroused purr of a voice, "I happen to find Deputy Dawg very, very sexy." Speaking in a voice that sounds like he has a crawfish stuck in his throat, Sandler makes Bobby appropriately dopey-adorable, easily his least abrasive screen character to date. Much of the rest of the movie's humor comes from Bates' willingness to go to extremes in pursuit of a laugh, and while her more high-brow fans may cringe when they see this Oscar-winning actress struggling to play badminton with a mule, so what? She appears to be having a pretty good time, and she's certainly providing the audience with one. James Sanford
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