THE WATERBOY

• Starring Adam Sandler, and Kathy Bates
• Directed by Frank Coraci
• Rated PG-13 with profanity, sexual references; running time 86 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 4

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Nov. 6, 1998) -- If you thought Adam Sandler's last hit, The Wedding Singer , was a major step up from his earlier slapstick silliness, then The Waterboy is a slide backward.

But if you prefer your Sandler simple and stupid -- as in Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison -- then his new film is a welcome return to form.

It's your call.

The Waterboy is the latest nonsensical farce from the Saturday Night Live alum, who has cornered the movie market on lovable dimwits. Here he writes and stars in a rah-rah football movie in the Rudy tradition, but only if it had starred a young Jerry Lewis.

Sandler plays Bobby Boucher, a 31-year-old Louisiana swamp Cajun still tightly tied to his mama's apron strings. The two share a bayou shack with their pet donkey and assorted 'gators and frogs.

Mama (Kathy Bates) lets Bobby leave home only long enough for his job as waterboy for a nearby college football team. The moment Bobby expresses a desire for an education, or a better job, or a love life, Mama goes bonkers.

And with his jutted-out jaw, thick accent and blank face, Bobby has a reputation only slightly better than the village idiot's.

Understandably, Bobby is a time bomb of repressed anger. When the football coach (Henry Winkler) sets him off, Bobby turns into the meanest, most feared linebacker in NCAA history. By imagining opposing quarterbacks as people who've held him back or who tease him, Bobby smashes every NCAA record for tackles and sacks.

Ah, but what'll happen when Mama finds out her "little boy" is playing "foosball," or that he's romancing a young woman (Fairuza Balk)?

While The Wedding Singer had a least one foot in humorous reality, The Waterboy is nothing more than a live-action comic book. What else can you call a movie in which the leading man drives around the county on a lawn mower, and his mom grills 'gators and makes biscuits containing whole frogs?

Sandler contributes a one-note performance as the sweetly simple Bobby. The resourceful Kathy Bates, however, gets a lot of mileage out of Mama; the most fun in The Waterboy comes from watching the Oscar-winning actress slumming in a lamebrain comedy.

Fairuza Balk is also clearly having fun as Vicki Vallencourt, the tattooed petty thief who has won Bobby's heart; Henry Winkler makes a welcome return to the screen as Bobby's insecure football coach.

Less enjoyable is a hammy, overacting Jerry Reed as the obnoxious coach at a rival college. Of course, like everything else in The Waterboy, his character is a cartoon.