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59%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #1,087
...out of 20,698 movies
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Bobby Boucher is a water boy for a struggling college football team. The coach discovers Boucher's hidden rage makes him a tackling machine whose bone-crushing power might vault his team into the playoffs.
--TMDb
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In 2007, Adam Sandler defied all previously known logic and turned in a measured and heartfelt performance in the motion picture "Reign Over Me", which cast him opposite Oscar nominee Don Cheadle and under the helm of Mike Binder, director. It was the performance we always knew Adam Sandler had in him -- not totally unlike himself, but with a new level of commitment to character and emotional depth. It made me almost forget about this film from 1998, the tepid and wholly ridiculous "The Waterboy". This was the first film I ever walked out of, and only later saw it in its entirety on DVD, when it was released. True -- I had a severe cold the night I walked out, but I would have likely done so without the help of mother nature and my immune deficiency.
The film is like every other film that has come before it. A backwoods Louisiana farm boy with a speech impediment, Bobby Boucher (Adam Sandler) is fired from the winning football team and must take on a water boy position at a new college, which is led by Coach Klein (Henry Winkler). Soon, however, everyone discovers that Bobby is a damned fine football player, as long as someone can get him angry enough. The rest of the film is people trying to make him angry so he'll play better. The film comes to a head with...of course...the big game. We know exactly what is going to happen there, don't we? Kathy Bates co-stars as Bobby's over-protective mother, who enjoys serving cooked anaconda to her guests.
This film is so predictable, it hurts. We know what's going to happen before it happens, and when it does happen, it seems like we've been there before...a million times or more. Adam Sandler is abysmal here, as he tries, almost embarrassingly so, to provide a speech impediment that he hopes will be funny. It is not. It's shameful. The humor he evokes with this character is more out of pity than anything else, and not in a good way. Henry Winkler has some humorous moments as the coach with zero self-confidence, but even he seems stunted. Praise to the great Kathy Bates for taking her characters and going balls-to-the-wall. That was the problem -- Sandler and Winkler seemed to be too tame for their own material. Kathy Bates went off the wall into American Gothic with hers and manages to extract almost 100% of the humor -- she is the only truly funny thing in this pile.
It's common knowledge -- I don't find Adam Sandler funny. "Happy Gilmore" made me laugh, but primarily due to Bob Barker and Christopher McDonald. He has this habit of playing these one note characters and hitting those notes too loudly throughout. He becomes annoying to soon and you can't root for him to win. A comedic actor like Jim Carrey knows how to play his comedy like an instrument and strum it slowly when he has to and then start rocking out when the time calls for him to do so. Adam Sandler is in a corner somewhere, playing an oboe and hitting the same damned note, over and over again. "The Waterboy" is a bad movie, but Kathy Bates makes it better than it should be. You've probably already seen it. I'm sorry for that. It gets 2/10 just for the fact that Kathy Bates is a goddess and made me laugh occasionally.
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#1:
Optimus Prime
- added August 17, 2007 at 12:43am
I don't know why but I really like the Water Boy
when it came out. I just loved Adam Sandler as
Bobby Boucher
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#2:
Vash
- added August 17, 2007 at 10:10pm
man, if you personally don't like adam sandler
movies, then what's the point of reviewing them?
everyone knows they follow a formula. that's like
reviewing an ac/dc record and complaining that all
the songs sound the same. comparing him to fucking
jim carrey, whose shtick has remained the same
since fucking in living color [and don't bring up
"eternal sunshine" or any of his serious roles,
please] doesn't exactly hold weight. everything
sandler's done since like 2000 has blown, but this
was hilarious. what's the point of reviewing a
movie from 98 if you don't even like the dude?
most people have seen this movie anyway and
forgotten about it.
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#3:
doney
- added August 18, 2007 at 1:47am
i thought it was a good movie until i read the
1960's play "And The Big Men Fly", which this
movie completely ripped off.
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#4:
bluemeanie
- added August 18, 2007 at 1:45pm
What's the point? It's what I do, that's the
point. And just because Adam Sandler always plays
one note characters doesn't mean someone doesn't
need to hold his feet to the fire. I don't
personally like James Bond movies either, but I
still review them and happened to think "Casino
Royale" was pretty decent. And why not bring up
Jim Carrey? It's a fair comparison. Sandler has
tried his hand at dramas the same as Carrey has,
but has not been nearly as successful because
Sandler is still, essentially, playing one note
characters -- just one note characters with a
little more depth. Carrey has a wide range as an
actor, evident by films like "Man On the Moon",
"The Truman Show" and, hell, even "The Majestic"
to some extent. What's the point of reviewing a
film from 1998? For that matter, what's the point
of reviewing a film from any year? What's the
point of reviews, for that matter? I reviewed the
film because my favorite actress, Kathy Bates, is
in it. And what a coincidence she happens to be
the best thing about it. But, I guess there's no
point to saying that. Pssh.
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#5:
Lucid Dreams
- added November 22, 2010 at 3:31am
This is probably my favorite film by him. It's so
fucking stupid, but I just have a guilty pleasure
for it and I loved it when that old man had the
baseball thrown at his temple. 8/10
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