Sandler's worst thus far

Rating: 1/10 (24 April 2012)

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.