From waterboy to football hero

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 1999)

I can hardly believe that this movie was done by the same team that made The Wedding Singer. All the charm and what little sophistication that that little movie had was entirely absent from The Waterboy. Adam Sandler (whom I otherwise like) was really terrible here and as for what Kathy Bates was doing in this movie. A few of the jokes were funny but a lot of opportunities were not explored e.g. the seventies b&w flashback: potentially funny, but nothing was done with it. Still, Fairuza Balk is always nice to look at and it was good to see both Henry Winkler and Jerry Reed again (memories of Smokey and the Bandit, now there's sophistication!). I cannot understand why this movie has become such a big hit in The United States, it may have something to do with the American Football setting. I saw The Waterboy in a sneak preview, I guess the distributor wanted to test the water. Football movies (and baseball movies for that matter) usually perform very poorly over here, if they do get a theatrical release that is. And Adam Sandler is hardly a household name in Europe. The Wedding Singer did not do much business here either (which was a shame). Give this one a miss.