Waterboy hits bottom of the barrel with this swamp-water slosh

Rating: 1/10 (19 November 1998)

You can mess with him, but don't mess with his water! Mild-mannered Mama's-Boy gets his wish & wins for the football team with his unique tackling ability in this rambling, idiotic, formula movie. Adam Sandler plays Bobby Bouchet, the lowly 31-year-old waterboy for a college football team that constantly terrorize him until he is fired by the mean-spirited coach. Another coach, played by Henry Winkler, from a rival team, discovers Bobby's amazing ability to tackle players much larger than him. Bobby pretends they are people who have teased him and made him angry.
Bobby is seduced by a local girl, much against his mother's wishes, and goes on to defy Mama by playing foos-ball, as she calls it, and becoming the star of the team. Just as the final game is to be played, his Mama discovers that Bobby has been playing ball, and fakes illness so that Bobby gives up football to be by her side. He promises to never leave her again, until the entire town and his football team comes to beg him to play and to apologize for making fun of him. His overprotective Mama, played beautifully by Kathy Bates, finally realizes the error of her ways and encourages him to play in the last game. Naturally, the team wins through Bobby's efforts, he gets the girl and all live happily ever after. This is the story of Bobby Bouchet, who is an unlikely protagonist. His problems are that he is disrespected by the team and others, and that he is the weak-willed victim of an overly-protective mother. He changes and becomes a hero by pretending he sees his enemies heads, jeering at him, on the bodies of the rival football team or in college instructors, tackling them, and finally realizing that he is a capable man and can succeed despite his mother. It takes the efforts of a sympathetic, and equally fearful coach, and a seductive young woman's love for Bobby to help him, and his Mama, see the light. The end of Act I is when the coach (Winkler) encourages Bobby to stand up for himself, and Bobby tackles a football player, knocking him down for the first time, which leads to the rest of this ridiculous story. Some of the secondary characters in this film are the two coaches: the good guy and the bad guy; the girl who is both good and bad; Bobby's black friend on the team; the townies; the Colonel Sanders look-alike professor, a bunch of drunken cheerleaders; the rival football team who are made up for the most part of real professional football players; and the members of Bobby's team. Set-ups/payoffs-reversals in this film include: Bobby visualizes enemies/ tackles whomever he needs to (pay-off); the girl fixes the lawn mower Bobby rides on/Bobby speeds off down the road on souped-up mower (pay-off); the team celebrating potential to win game/Coach informs Bobby that he can't play, due to faked HS diploma (reversal). The major conflicts for the protagonist are that he wants to get away from clutches of his over-protective mother; he loves the girl, but is afraid to antagonize his mother; and he wants to go to college but feels he is too stupid to do so William Goldman1s theory about the 1st 15 pages & last 15 minutes are evidenced in this film, in that the first 15 minutes/pages do get immediately into the set-up of the story and introduce the protagonist, showing his problems and sucking the audience in to that story & hoping he'll win, over these conflicts. There are also some comedic moments, which make some audience members laugh. In the last fifteen minutes, all is resolved to the audience1s expectations, with a few surprises and additional laughs aimed at an unsophisticated audience, which satisfy the requirements of Goldman's theory by making the last 15 minutes as important as the first 15 minutes. There are many 3movie-moments2 in this film, some funny scenes and others just visual gags, like Bobby visualizing the head of various enemies, such as his mother, or the mean coach on the body of rival football players, then tackling them; the donkey drinking out of the toilet bowl; the girl seducing Bobby, while his mother sleeps; and the scene of Bobby defying his mother and going to play football are just a few of the movie-moments that make this film a "hit" among the biggest movie-going crowd: young men aged 16-24 and their dates. Several "rules" from Goldman's book, "Adventures in the Screen Trade" are used in Waterboy, and perhaps used to excess: make 'em laugh, meet audience expectations for believability, show rather than tell, give them a happy ending, thus proving that dreams do come true, populate the story with many antagonists and make those antagonists as strong as the protagonist, make the protagonist a sympathetic character, make his or her problems multiple, give the protagonist deep conflicts, have a love interest, and give the star the best lines of dialog. The story is weak and sophomoric; the jokes and sight-gags are not funny, for the most part; one knows the ending within the first few minutes; and the dialog is about the worst-written I have ever experienced in a film. "Simple, down-trodden hometown boy, much in thrall to evil witch of a mother defies her and becomes local hero who wins for the team and gets the girl" is not this viewer1s idea of a clever or enlightening screenplay or film. It was pure torture to sit through, especially being forced to listen to Adam Sandler's ridiculous lines given in a stupid and virtually unintelligible and geeky accent. The only real strength of this film lies in the characterization of Mama and her lines of dialog, as well as her eventual realization of what she has done to her son. Her story is at least interesting and well-thought-out, almost as if it had been written by a different screenwriter. The rest of the people in the story have no real depth of character, and are flat caricatures of commonly-held stereotypes. I'd advise against spending money to see this film...wait for the video to come out and go rent it only to see the character of Mama, if you can get through the rest of the dreck in Waterboy. There's not much genuinely funny about this movie, and it definitely is a waste of time.