While not the funniest movie I've ever seen, The Waterboy had a lot of funny moments, all thanks to Adam Sandler.

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2002)

There were a couple of slow moments, the humor was sophmoric at best, and the plot was simplistic, but it had me laughing almost all the way through. Adam Sandler plays Bobby Boucher, a waterboy for a college football team. He's a little, well, slow and the guys on the team make fun of him for it. The hard ass coach finally fires him, and Bobby is left without his favorite thing. Water. His mama (Kathy Bates) doesn't want Bobby anywhere but at home with her, but being 31, Bobby kind of doesn't want that anymore. So he heads to the worst college football team in the area, and the coach there, Coach Kline (Henry Winkler) hires him. Mind you, Coach Kline also talks to himself, but that's another story.
While on the practice field, this new team starts picking on Bobby. Coach Kline tells him he needs to stick up for himself. To focus on his anger and fight back. And we all know what happens. Bobby almost kills the quarterback by spearing him in the open field. Coach Kline tells Bobby he needs to join the team. But Mrs. Boucher forbids Bobby to play football, so Bobby has to lie to her to play. So of course Bobby's team meets his old team in the big bowl game, and I think you can guess what happens.
The plot is straight forward. Nice guy gets picked on, makes some new friends with his "gift" of being able to play football, his new friends who were once losers now become winners, and they all make it to the championship game. Sort of reminds me of The Mighty Ducks. The reason this movie is so funny, is Adam Sandler. I remember watching him when he first started his stand-up years ago, but I never thought he'd click with the country as well as he has. He has this childish charm about him, and you can't help but laugh when he's on screen. During the movie, whenever he'd let out his little scream before pummeling the opposing player, I'd start to laugh. I also laughed out loud at Henry Winkler's ass, but I'd have to say, the funniest scene to me was the one with Lawrence Taylor. LT is running a football camp, and he has Bobby come and speak. Bobby is still a little slow, and what he basically says is to tackle the guy with the ball. So LT looks at the kids, and says something like, "and kids, this is another reason why you shouldn't smoke crack!" I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Lawrence Taylor telling someone not to smoke crack. I don't think Sandler could have picked a better time to release this movie, seeing as how Taylor was arrested a couple weeks before for possession of Crack. Oh mercy...
Anyway, the real key to this movie was Adam Sandler. Henry Winkler had a few funny scenes, but the rest of the cast didn't do much but set up Sandler. Kathy Bates as Mrs. Boucher was just a little annoying if nothing else. And Fairuza Balk (God bless her) as Bobby's love interest didn't do much for me either. Like I said before, the plot of the movie wasn't original, so it was the performances that would help this film along. And the performances weren't all that special either, it's just the way Adam Sandler is that makes the movie funny.
So overall, I found The Waterboy laugh out loud funny. But if you don't like Adam Sandler, you're not going to like this movie.