The Waterboy (1998)

Smith’s Verdict: *

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

1998’s “The Waterboy” has a story that would’ve made a great starring vehicle for Adam Sandler, who—let’s face it—hadn’t had accurately good movies in his career before this. I mean, what can you say about “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore,” except that Sandler played a jackass in both movies and was short on charm? Well, in “The Waterboy,” Sandler does play a nicer guy—a simple, stuttering, nervous, dim 30-year-old man who still lives with his mother and is the waterboy for a college football team in Louisiana. This is a role that Adam Sandler could use his true talents for comedy and charm.

But there is a problem and a big one at that. Right when Adam Sandler’s character Bobby Boucher speaks, our interest in him really deteriorates. He speaks through his nose, through whining, and with an accent that apparently he and the filmmakers found funnier than I did. Nobody in Louisiana talks this way. It’s an insult to Louisiana, but also an insult to us because when Sandler talks, his voice has the fingernails-on-a-blackboard effect. Is that supposed to be funny?

Bobby is fired from his job as the waterboy and goes to find a new job. He goes to a different college and asks the football coach (Henry Winkler) to be his waterboy. He gets hired and like everybody else, the football team picks on him because he’s so dim. There’s another strange person who hangs around the field—a country man named Farmer Fran (Blake Hunter). The difference between Bobby and Farmer Fran is that you can understand what Bobby is saying when Farmer Fran is simply muttering. Is THAT supposed to be funny?

Ah, forget it. Let’s move on.

The plot gets underway when Bobby realizes that when he really gets worked up, he can become a great offensive tackle. The coach lets Bobby play on the team but Bobby doesn’t quite understand the rules of football, even though he’s been to many, many games before, serving water to the players.

Filmmakers, if you want your comedy to be fresh and entertaining, use different ways of forming a sports movie; have fresher jokes. Don’t give us something we’ve seen before. The only difference of these particular football games, which are quite boring indeed, is that we’re given an idiot for a player. That’s not enough. We need more ideas so we’re caught up in the games. This is basically a formula sports movie with, worst of all, boring football games. And of course, at the end, there’s the typical Big Game, in which there is no suspense whatsoever—nothing to hold our attention.

Oh, and I forgot to mention Kathy Bates as Bobby’s mother who is possessive and manipulative and kept her son practically trapped in his cabin at the bayou. She has fun with this role but when you put it with everything else that happens in this movie, it really doesn’t mean anything.

Henry Winkler has no good chance with this movie, I’m sorry to say. He seems better than all of this. Overall, “The Waterboy” is a movie that tries to be funny but is just conventional—nothing new, just a few stupid characters. Adam Sandler’s Bobby Boucher is one of the most annoying characters ever to hit the screen. I’ve seen magazine reporters on TV with more appeal than this character.