The Waterboy (1998)

Am I the only one that finds it bad if after the first sentence the main character says, you want to reach into his throat, rip out his vocal cords, and throw them into lava Temple of Doom-style? Maybe that’s just me. And in this movie, Adam Sandler isn’t the only one guilty. Kathy Bates’ character in this would just not shut up. I wanted to strangle her with Adam Sandler’s vocal cords. And that’s not the reaction that people in movies are supposed to get. Even the most awful villains that I just hate with all my energy, that I want to personally end myself, I don’t want to end them because I just want them to shut up, like I do here. As you can probably tell from this review already, The Waterboy is easily one of the lesser Adam Sandler films. One of the worst parts is that the film was released in 1998, the same year that one of my favorite Adam Sandler films, The Wedding Singer, was released. On its own, The Waterboy is nothing more than a stupid comedy that isn’t doing any major damage. But here, next to The Wedding Singer, this movie is pretty bad. The film follows the adventures of a very stupid 31-year-old waterboy, Bobby, (Adam Sandler) who turns out to be great at football, much to the disdain of his mother (Kathy Bates). To make matters worse for her (even though I don’t care), Bobby begins to date a girl (Fairuza Balk), who she does not approve of. Honestly, why am I even bothering? The plot doesn’t matter. All that matters is that there are some jokes that hit, and a lot of jokes that miss. The film is just too annoying to keep itself from being anything better than average. And the film is just mediocre. Honestly, sometimes, mediocre is a compliment to this film. I am starting to understand the hate for Adam Sandler. I really wished I would disagree with it all, that they were just being pretentious. But they’re not. He’s just not that funny sometimes.
5/10