The Waterboy (1998)

the audience applauded

People are voting emotionally.

Captivating movie !

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

I'm not a sporty guy, so this is the first sports film I've seen in a long time, and it was surprisingly okay. It had its quirky 90's humor that gave me a good chuckle, and the football competition of the movie was generally entertaining, but it more focused on character development, which was entertaining to watch.

The Waterboy is about an awkward, stuttering guy in his mid-thirties named Bobby Boucher who lives with his mom (Kathy Bates) in rural Louisiana. He works as a waterboy (hence the name) for a very successful college football team, and has since he was a young boy. Unfortunately, he's fired, so he takes his services to a much smaller team called the South Central Louisiana State Mud Dogs. On his first day, he is made fun of by a player, and the coach tells him to do something about it. Bobby tackles the guy, completely destroying him. The coach asks him to join the team, and Bobby accepts, but keeps it secret from his over-protective mom. Bobby leads the pathetic Mud Dogs to a great season, culminating in a berth to a bowl game against his former employer. A lot of stuff goes down, and long story short, Bobby shows up to the game at halftime and leads the Mud Dogs to a comeback victory. The entire movie is hilarious, and unless you've seen the movie before, the plot is actually a little unexpected. Boucher is played by Adam Sandler. I know, his movies lately have been pretty bad, but his old ones are good, especially this one. The humor in the movie is outrageous, including subtle nods to people who actually follow football, such as hall of fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor saying, "Don't smoke crack" to kids (Taylor famously wrote a book in which he admitted to using cocaine often). Sandler over-acts in his role as a mentally challenged person, but it's the over-acting that makes his character so funny. The roles of scouts and reporters are filled by actual scouts and reporters, like former players Dan Fouts and Lynn Swann. I've never actually been to Louisiana, so I don't know how people are there, but I imagine most of the characters are over-acted as well, especially Bobby's mom and most of the fans. The over-acting helps set the mood of the movie, however, so I think it's a welcome addition. Unlike most stupid comedies, the plot is not too stupid. Yes, it's kind of stupid, but it at least shows motive for all the characters, as well as establishing what makes each character unique. That's more than can be said about some other stupid movies. You can clearly understand why Bobby wants to play football, why the coach of SCLSU is scared and crazy, and why Bobby's mom is scared of him playing football. When watching The Waterboy, you really shouldn't approach it looking for a sophisticated movie with high-class humor. If you watch it knowing that it's going to be stupid, which you should since it's an Adam Sandler movie, then you are always going to have a fun time watching it. However, if you approach it like a movie critic, thinking you can tell other people what makes a movie good, then you are going to leave disappointed. Some people need to open their minds and stop being so butthurt about movies like The Waterboy. Just enjoy the damn movie instead of trying to critique every part of it. The Waterboy is a great movie that everybody should watch. His humor may not be enjoyable to everybody, but Sandler delivers a hilarious film with this one. It won 6 awards and was nominated for 6 more, and it never fails to make everybody laugh. Among the awards it was nominated for or won are MTV Best Comedic Performance for Sandler and Blockbuster Favorite Supporting Actress for Bates. Before watching The Waterboy, prepare for countless jokes and laughs, not amazing cinematography or great acting. The plot is surprisingly intriguing, and the viewer usually finds themselves rooting for Bobby to go out and win the Bourbon Bowl. The film does a great job of making an antagonist, Coach Red, that is extremely unlikable, so Bobby and his team becomes likable by contrast. The story of how the SCLSU Mud Dogs came together, bonded, and came back to win the Bourbon Bowl over the heavily favorited Louisiana Cougars is timeless. It has become a sports cult classic that is so popular that the social media accounts of sports media sites like ESPN and Bleacher Report acknowledge the anniversary of its release every year. Bobby Boucher will go down in history as one of the best fictional sports figures ever.

This is one of the best Adam Sandlers best movies ever! Sandlers is his usual funny self. His use of his goofy personality puts a great spin on the movie...we root Adam o4n the whole movie. this movie is not the best movie of Adams career! Its the top 5 under click ,happy Gilmore and big daddy.

Adam Sandler has succeeded in making his lamest, most desperate feature thus far. The Waterboy is an atrocious picture, comically and socially inept, pathetically humorless, and void of all things likable.Sandler has taken the formulaic structure of his previous feature, Happy Gilmore, made a few adjustments to the character and pacing, and somehow made a less likable film altogether. I've mentioned before that despite all the praise I have heard, I found Happy Gilmore to be a mediocre comedy. The Waterboy manages to take an already unnecessary screenplay and formula of creating an unlikable protagonist that is nothing shy of intolerable and again making him the main character in the film. The first step to making a bad film.The film is played the same way as well. Sandler is Bobby Boucher a stuttering water boy for the Louisiana Cougars. He is constantly pushed around for his strange lisp-like accent and the fact that he never fights back. After being kicked off the Cougars team, he approaches Coach Klein (Winkler) of the South Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs. Klein discovers that when Bobby becomes angry, he becomes violent and that can help the team. So commences underdog story number two-thousand as Bobby goes from nothing to something.I am beginning to reach a personal quandary. How is possible to assemble a comedy film where not a single character is likable or even remotely tolerable? This shouldn't come as a surprise. Sandler's exercise in poor taste can be considered even poorer than poor taste. Let's look at his past and current filmography. We have the mediocre Happy Gilmore, the crass and pathetic I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, the melodramatic but strangely acceptable Click, the well-crafted 50 First Dates (despite a few problems I mentioned in my review), the underwhelming Grown Ups, the incredibly unlikable Just Go With It, and the most recent abomination, Jack and Jill. Man, can a filmography get anymore divided? I believe the reason Sandler is such an unbalanced actor is the fact he can't make a comedy without making characters that are shallow, immoral, and intolerable, or make a drama without being ridiculous and unnecessarily comedic. The Waterboy is on a whole different level, though. It doesn't even feel like it is trying to be creative or clever. It's an assembly of repetitive sequences, plagued with an immediately unconvincing character that is sadly our protagonist, a script that feels distended and uninspired, and a formula that may as well have just told us in the beginning how the thing turns out. You know how movies do that? They make the end sequence first, hardly leaving any suspense for the real ending? The Waterboy needed that so many unfortunate audience members would be spared of inane dreck.Starring: Adam Sandler, Kathy Bates, Henry Winkler, Fairuza Balk, and Jerry Reed. Directed by: Frank Coraci.