Directed by Frank Coraci
Running time 90 mins
Certificate 12
For all that everyone has written the last generation of Saturday Night Live alumni off as failures and cheap photostats of the classic era of Murray, Chase, Belushi and Ackroyd, they're actually proving to be far bigger film stars than their predecessors. Chris Rock blagged his way onto the set of Lethal Weapon 4 to no small effect, the well-established Mike Myers is being hyped as the great white hope for the summer comedy dollar with is second Austin Powers movie, while Sandler has gone from low-rent retard comedies Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison to the wickedly big-hearted The Wedding Singer. The latter not only saw him shake off his reputation as a commercial second-rater but also bit into the idea that he could only manage to play pleasant in-breeds and southern bumpkins. He was sharp, sweet, charming and cunning, all comedic skills that countered his slightly vitriolic take on Hee-Haw.
In that sense, The Waterboy is a huge step backwards. It's definitely a prime opportunity to mock a retard or, in the proper parlance, a 'tard flick. It's not a nice term but it's like chick flick: it's a term that is unpleasant, descriptive and sums up the normal feelings of concern about its existence. Like christian fundamentalist: some people would take that as a compliment. They're just weird like that.
Anyway, Sandler has dropped any semblance of intelligence for the role of Bobby Boucher, a true 'tard of the first order. Bobby is 31, a native of Louisiana and still living at home in a clap-board shack with his deranged aphorism-spouting mama. Thick as a mango tree drenched in Spanish moss, he sees nothing wrong with the fact that he still spends all his life as the Waterboy for a local college football team. He sees nothing wrong with the fact that he has a vast array of waters, from spring to tap, laid out with surgical sterility, their pH perfect, their temperature not merely chilled but maintained at the perfect level to avoid the judders. He sees nothing wrong with the fact that a grown man has dedicated his life to providing the perfect cup of water for some schoolboy athletes. Mind you, he doesn't see anything wrong with having a donkey in the living room or roast squirrel for dessert.
However, he's such a doofus that his mere presence distracts the team: they're too busy beating him up to actually practice. So the coach sacks him, depriving him of his only purpose in life and so he needs new employment. Signing up with the worst team in the world, landed with an cross-eyed quarterback, a coach that talks to himself and a fat, depressed cheerleading squad that has turned to alcohol to deal with the embarrassment of a forty game losing streak, he should fit right in with an equally dismal bunch of losers. At this point we're veering perilously close to Porky's territory, but a plot twist evolves. It turns out that Bobby, the biggest geek in the state, is a mean tackle when raised to anger. Given a shot on the team, he turns the whole fate of the team around, transforming this bunch of sozzelled gumbo-sucking losers into a bunch of sozzelled gumbo-sucking winners, as, with a pig-fucker squeal, he puts every opponent in his way straight on their back and occasionally in a body cast. So really the pitch would be Forrest Gump meets Porky's.
It should be the ideal role for Sandler, the dimwitted but lovable hero. Unfortunately, he seems to have attempted to meld two aspects of his comic persona to little avail. Bobby is a 'tard, a ludicrous in-bred swamp dwelling, 'gator-grilling imbecile with a speech impediment. He's also a sweet-natured guy with a desire to serve the best water possible. He wants to improve himself, to be a real man and benefit everyone around him. Bobby is expected to be laughable and lovable all at once, two dichotomous drives that Sandler can never quite make mesh. It's exactly the same problem that afflicted the remarkably similar eponymous hero of The Jerk )what's worth remarking upon is he fact that Sandler has pretty much copied Steve Martin's deranged hick routine note for note, but I'll say nothing more on that just in case his lawyers are listening). It's his own fault, because as well as being the lead he was also the script-writer and so seems to have indulged his star a little too much.
It's a shame that Sandler the writer let Sandler the comedian down so badly because he does serve the rest of the cast so well. It comes down to viciousness: they're aren't the hero, so they don't need to be heroic. That additional license gives them more room to indulge in real jokes. Standing above all is the imperious Kathy Bates, who is becoming increasingly seen as the first lady of American cinema, in a role of Southern inhospitality that would make Tennessee Williams cringe in fear. As Bobby's god-fearing, restrictive, snake-baking mother, she perfects the fiery glare that only mothers can manage and she is only ever matched for sheer orneriness by Fairuza Balk as his wannabe girlfriend and occasional violent criminal Vicki, whose swamp rat is every tattooed and bad-toothed inch the trailer trash to which Neve Campbell merely aspired in Wild Things. As the official anti-Drew Barrymore (there's nooooooo way you could take her home to mother) she's perfect as the town trouble maker. She and Bates represent the two draws upon Bobby's life: Mama wants to protect Bobby from the ills of the world, while Vicki wants to show him the myriad possibilities of life beyond the swamp. Of course, Mama sees Vicki as a vicious little tramp out to bump uglies with her poor boy, while Vicki knows that mama is psychotic old widder-lady hell-bent on warping Bobby even further through a diet of fire and brimstone into being little more than her pet. Mercifully for the audience, they're pretty much right about each other.
After all, this is a depiction of Louisiana that does for the swamps pretty much what Deliverance did for the backwoods. If you don't have buck teeth, you've probably got a speech impediment. Preferably both. Sandler brings up every redneck cinematic cliche, from the cross-eyed quarterback to the unintelligible Cajun assistant coach (played by Blake Clark but only because Bert Convey was busy that weekend) and the dungaree-clad morons in the stands and treats them all with the same level of derision. This actually means that you actually quite get to like them: after all, they're ugly idiots but who here isn't? So while Sandler falls between two stools, the big laughs are to be derived from Bates' increasing madness and the look of raw fear in the eyes of the opposing teams whenever Bobby appears.
So it's not Woody Allen, but so what? Big crowd, big popcorn, pizza and beer afterwards and this is ideal Saturday night fare. It's probably too broad in its humor to suit the solitary audience member but this just means you should rustle up a car load of friends and make an evening of it.
Of course, there is a question for a British movie audience that this is an American Football movie and therefore may require a certain degree of background information about a sport that goes beyond minority interest in this country. One might be lumbered with complex sight gags about esoteric rule structures and bizarre guest spots from stars of the game, all of which are going to fly over their head. Well, true, there are a handful of cameos that aren't worth listing here as, hands up, how many readers from East of Rhode Island could pick Brent Musberger out of a line-out? Thought as much. Plus there may be a bit of a culture shock as to how seriously America takes college football. The idea of a university match in any sport taking place in a stadium before a capacity crowd with a simultaneous TV broadcast would be cause for hilarity in its own right on this side of the pond. However, as for the game itself, as long as you know that it involves large blokes running at each other with a ball and young girls rustling their pom-poms on the side-lines, then you'll get the joke. It's literally knock-about stuff, with the final mad half-hour dedicated to the will-they, won't-they, of the final match. Of course, you know that it's a definite "they will" (it's not My Dinner With Andre, you know: this is pure pre-determinism) but you will laugh on route and that's perfect.
RMW