Blu-ray Review: The Waterboy (1998)

Now Available to Own



Photo Slideshow

Bookmark this on Delicious

Print Page





In the world of film criticism, it seems as though if say you find Adam Sandler funny, you're committing an offense of the highest order. And while you'll never catch me wanting to watch Click, Little Nicky, or even The Waterboy ever again-- overall and flaws aside, I've still found a lot to like in his comedic work in movies such as The Wedding Singer, Anger Management, Billy Madison and You Don't Mess With the Zohan.

Yet it's also on display when he's working alongside other talents in dramatic performances such as in Paul Thomas Anderson's underrated Punch Drunk Love, James L. Brooks' underrated Spanglish and Mike Binder's underrated Reign Over Me. Gee, are we sensing a pattern? Yes, there is a Sandler prejudice and also Adam Sandler is extremely underrated. To this end, it seems as though very few individuals have realized the extent of his talent which goes way beyond the horrific character he created along with his frequent screenwriter Tim Herlihy in director Frank Coraci's The Waterboy.

Moreover, the Sandler influence seems to crop up everywhere from-- I swear-- a similar voice heard in some of Jon Stewart's impressions on The Daily Show to Jimmy Fallon basically trying to become the next generation's Sandler even going as far as to make his best film with Sandler's greatest female costar Drew Barrymore via Fever Pitch.

Yet where Waterboy forgets to incorporate the funny is by failing to successfully blend together the two ingredients that seem to show up repeatedly in the man's various characters whether created by Sandler or others including Binder and Anderson. In other words, the quintessential Sandler character is one that possesses genuine innocent sweetness and a boyish naivete mixed in equal measure with a Warner Brothers Acme stick of dynamite that's ready to explode.

A lot has been written about Sandler's good angel and bad angel schtick as the well-intentioned overgrown juvenile character we've witnessed in Madison, Happy Gilmore or Big Daddy (which co-starred Jon Stewart). Essentially, he seems filled with true sweetness yet he has the capability to move directly into overly violent bully territory within an instant which can honestly alarm viewers.

Whether he's beating up a bathroom in Punch Drunk Love, throwing dodgeballs extremely hard at first graders in Billy Madison, or rough handling any number of people in his films-- in a sense Adam Sandler has taken the classic Laurel and Hardy, Marx Brothers or Three Stooges-like ensemble idea and turned it into one individual.

Basically, when we meet a Sandler character in each successive film, we're never exactly sure whom we're going to encounter as he moves from hugs to hits with frightening speed but one of the reasons it worked better in the aforementioned comedy teams is because they were an ensemble and so it was easier to take when you balanced Harpo with Chico and Laurel with Hardy.

Walking the thin line between physical comedy and downright violence is the task undertaken in The Waterboy when we first encounter Sandler in sugar sweet mode as Bobby Boucher, the overly sheltered, smothered mama's boy still living at home at the age of thirty-one.

Apparently mentally challenged and shy-- he rides his tractor from his cliched Louisiana backwoods bayou swamp home shared with his mother Kathy Bates (a long, long way from her usual Oscar worthy self) to the local university where he delivers high quality water as the football team's official waterboy.

Mercilessly ridiculed with school bus level insults aimed squarely at his disability, when it's the victim Bobby who's accused of distracting the team so much by simply existing as a mentally challenged individual the guys bully to no end, he's fired.

Unwilling to just quit the waterboy gig altogether, Bobby visits a local college whose football team's historic losing streak has made them the laughingstock of ESPN. And much to his shock, he's hired-- obviously for free-- to become the "water distribution engineer" by the formerly great and now frazzled Coach Klein (Henry Winkler).

One of the film's only saving graces--Winkler's Coach Klein is the one who tells Bobby at long last that it's okay to stick up for himself. Although when thirty-one years of pent up frustration boils to the surface, Bobby goes berserk, violently knocking the man to the ground in a way that gives Klein the idea that Bobby may be precisely what his team needs to actually win a single game.

Lying to his mama about becoming a football player and college student as well as spending increasing amounts of time with free-spirited recently released jailbird Vicki Vallencourt (Fairuza Balk), Sandler's Bobby Boucher soon becomes the star of the team.

An obvious retread of not just Happy Gilmore but other underdog sports tales-- where Waterboy goes terribly wrong is by constantly resorting to awful gross-out memories and over-the-top violence as the most frequent source for jokes. Likewise in having way too much fun with the stereotypical southern setting as Bates cooks up squirrels and gators, we're never sure if we're laughing with Bobby and the Louisiana community or at them as the same cliches of "retarded" and "redneck" that the film allegedly is trying to prove are shallow and wrong.

Thus, in the end, it's squirm-inducing, uncomfortable humor that feels like a ninety minute live action version of a cartoon created by a few teens understandably tired of being picked on in high school yet seeking creative justice rather than violent justice. I only wish the same could be said for the journey of Bobby Boucher.

However, at the end of the day, there's nothing creative about a film that Sandler and Herlihy could've penned in a single afternoon that is nowhere near as intricate or clever as the brief skits from SNL where Sandler would star in "The Denise Show," play the "Opera Man" or grab a guitar and sing odes to Hanukkah, red sweatshirts, or lunch ladies.

A waste of all involved save for Winkler whose playful performance earned the sole laugh I could muster when screening the work for the second time in eleven years on Blu-ray disc as he illustrates the need to rebel by sharing his inked appreciation for Roy Orbison.

So instead for angry Sandler, your best bet is still seeing him square off opposite Jack Nicholson in Anger Management when the premise works precisely because he's in denial of the rage he repeatedly lunges towards in his films and for sweet Sandler, he'll never top The Wedding Singer which is still one of my favorite '90s romantic comedies.

Boasting zero bonus features since most likely none of the individuals involved felt like reliving the experience-- the Blu-ray from Touchstone Pictures is otherwise top-notch as it was distributed by Walt Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment which proves on a weekly basis that they have this format down to an exact science.

Moreover it duplicates the same experience I'd had viewing the film originally in theatres back in '98 with a clear soundtrack that balances the sound of a roaring crowd and the dialogue well across your speakers that syncs up perfectly with razor sharp picture quality. Yet, given the price-tag of Blu-ray discs, my advice would be to hold off on making the upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray for this feature based on the poor content alone (regardless of its superior quality) in the hopes that eventually, a definitive Sandler set will be put together on Blu-ray that will make the price increase worth the switch.

However, one major hurdle that will no doubt get in the way of this becoming a reality-- as Jack Lemmon's son Chris explained in our recent interview while discussing the complexities of sets regarding his dad's body of work-- is the number of studios that would have to work together and film property that's owned by several different corporations. Although, I'm still optimistic that in the future more cross-promotional efforts will be made since studios have begun to realize the home entertainment boom in lieu of poor box office returns.

Likewise, in a society where so much content is available online, perhaps thinking outside the box for business reasons in sharing material to give fans what they'd want and a reason to shell out money would be one extremely profitable and beneficial way to combat the problems facing the entertainment industry in the new millennium.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

Blu-ray Review: Bedtime Stories (2008) -- 3-Disc Set

Keeping You Laughing
Way Past Your Bedtime
On Blu-ray and DVD

Or Click Below to Download It On iTunes

View Clips from the Film in
Our Video Screening Room

There is something irresistibly magical about watching movies with children-- almost like reading them a great bedtime story as they chime in with their own questions and comments in a way that actress Keri Russell noted that makes it "a clever way of finding out what is on their mind or what they might be afraid of or excited about.”

Recently, yours truly--or as I'm known to my beloved niece and nephew: Aunt Jenny-- had the opportunity of seeing the world and especially Walt Disney entertainment through the eyes of young children when they came to visit. Overjoyed that their arrival coincided with the receipt of numerous Disney titles for review-- it was wonderful to step outside the single-minded critical bubble of film reviewing in what is essentially solitary work—aside from some priceless chats with colleagues-- and find what moved them, scared them, or made them laugh both on-screen and off.

Although my toddler aged niece was too young for the Adam Sandler release of director Adam Shankman’s Bedtime Stories-- instead preferring Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Lilo & Stitch (once I fast-forwarded through the scary beginning) -- her slightly older brother vividly recalled going to the theater to watch a movie wherein as he thrillingly explained, eyes-widened, “it rained gumballs from the sky.”

And indeed it is precisely the magical special effects and emphasis on visually creative digital CGI that essentially helps save this unfortunately watered down Happy Madison production from complete oblivion. In a Disney released interview with director Adam Shankman (Hairspray, The Pacifier, Bringing Down the House, The Wedding Planner), he even acknowledges just how important shooting digitally was by arguing that, “now it seems like two-thirds of any film's audience is on DVD." Furthermore, he explained that although in the past he’s realized that his works “look so much more beautiful [on DVD] then they did on the movie screen. I know that this one is absolutely going to look better on DVD.”

And he's definitely right as the three disc Blu-ray edition of Bedtime Stories (which in the high quality/budget friendly package includes a Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital copy compatible with Windows Media and/or Apple’s iTunes thereby giving families the film in three different formats no matter what kind of technology you currently own) is stunning in its clarity, sound, impressive depth perception of the imaginative scenes, and seamless insertion of CGI into the live action scenes that are predominantly filled with actors.

Moreover, the Blu-ray is filled with some very cool behind-the-scenes extras that invite viewers to look at the special effects, one that focuses on the priceless guinea pig Bugsy (who I was amazed to discover wasn’t computer generated), another one involving the way that Sandler perpetually devoted himself to making the children laugh, along with outtakes that largely consist of Sandler cracking himself up in the company of Rob Schneider and forgetting his lines.

However, this being said-- for viewers such as myself who always looked forward to the latest Adam Sandler movie including my personal favorite The Wedding Singer as I grew up watching him on Saturday Night Live alongside Mike Myers, David Spade, Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, Rob Schneider and more -- there isn't a whole lot about Bedtime Stories for adults to enjoy in terms of its story-line. So instead, it's ideal for its target audience of pre-kindergarten through grade school, sadly managing to blend the two audiences together the way that Disney usually is able to do.

Essentially it finds him recycling his thinly disguised Adam Sandler character we've seen put to far greater comedic effect in Anger Management, Billy Madison, and others as the sweet, sensitive man-child that’s always on the verge of exploding while on the path to grow up and stick up for himself. Bedtime Stories, which is written by his frequent scripter Tim Herlihy along with Matt Lopez, once again allows Sandler to coast playing the appropriately childishly named Skeeter Bronson.

Although to his credit, every once in a while Sandler has gone for broke taking admirable risks not to play it safe with serious turns and the underrated Mike Binder film Reign Over Me (opposite Don Cheadle and Jada Pinkett Smith) and Paul Thomas Anderson’s odd, darkly tinged love-story Punch Drunk Love (with Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman) as well as taking on entirely new characters such as in 2008’s surprisingly hilarious and top Mossad agent turned hairstylist in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. But ultimately with Bedtime Stories, we have Happy Madison’s first PG rated film that allows the star to join the family friendly Walt Disney Studios.

Obviously, a personally enticing project for the devoted father who contacted devoted mothers Keri Russell and Courtney Cox to all take part in something their children would enjoy and while on principle you want to love an Adam Sandler family film since it shows off his natural, charismatic, easygoing sweetness (that’s even evident in Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy), unfortunately, the plot and humor are incredibly thin and it feels like an airplane friendly recycled hodgepodge of his character from other films cleaned up for the kiddies.

However, it’s a character that works well, raking in the millions repeatedly although the humble Sandler comments in the press notes that, “I make my movies and then I walk away…. I don’t want to know if they did good or bad, I just want to make movies. So there is no pressure. I have always been that guy and I always will be that guy.”

Sandler’s British comedic sidekick in the film, the hilarious scene-stealer Russell Brand (playing every moment fast and loose with a certain freedom that’s oddly missing in this restrained version of Sandler), has his own take on why his A-list comedic actor returns again and again to this type of material, joking that, “I think that Adam Sandler is how America likes to see itself. It is a powerful country, charismatic, attractive, occasionally makes mistakes but eventually puts them right.” And honestly, it’s with this articulate though admittedly “risky” (as he notes) response that essentially sums up the plot of every one of the Happy Madison productions about the outsiders who make mistakes and has to rectify them in less than two hours.

In Bedtime Stories, Sandler stars as the hotel handyman at a swanky Hilton like estate (complete with a Paris Hilton-like character) who stubbornly refuses to move on and find better work elsewhere. Stifled by anger at the broken promise made by the new owner (Richard Griffiths) who swore to Sandler’s father (Jonathan Pryce) upon buying the nearly bankrupt business that one day Skeeter would be put in charge, he still remains the hotel’s most dedicated employee, much to the chagrin of the smarmy yuppies played by Guy Pearce and Lucy Lawless who intend on taking over the business.

When Skeeter’s recently divorced sister Wendy (Courtney Cox) contacts him-- after four years of not inviting him to her home (following Skeeter’s decision to punch out the husband he knew she’d dump eventually)-- he shows up and is surprised to discover a niece and nephew with whom he’s barely familiar. Hired as a last resort to babysit the children—consisting of the adorable Jonathan Morgan Heit and Laura Ann Kesling portray Patrick and Bobbi respectively—as job-seeking, soon-to-be-laid-off school principal Wendy travels to Arizona for job interviews, Skeeter is amazed to learn that they live in a home without television.

Unwilling and uninterested in reading what he jokingly refers to as “communist”stories with titles such as “The Organic Squirrel Gets a Bike Helmet,” or child friendly tips on how to save the wetlands, instead over the course of the week Skeeter spin five structurally similar, mostly autobiographical yarns encompassing a wide array of genres from medieval knights, the old west, and outer space.

Dubbing himself “Mr. Underappreciated,” until he realizes that for the sake of the tots he should stick with Sir-Fix-A-Lot, Skeeter relays his job woes and ongoing war with Sir Butkiss (Guy Pearce) who morph into various characters each night as the children interject their own morals and endings, following their distaste for their uncle’s belief that there are “no happy endings.”

Amazed the next day when some of the events from the story appeared to be coming true including the rain of gumballs, soon the self-obsessed Skeeter can’t wait to tell the kids another new story, hoping to further his career and get the respect he always wanted.

Serving up Keri Russell as a pretty-as-pie teacher (reportedly, Sandler wanted to hire Russell after seeing her in Waitress) who begins what is initially an antagonistic relationship with Skeeter until predictably romantic sparks fly—the plot bounces along with its series of misunderstandings and coincidences but never fails to come alive save for in the wild CGI sequences that move the humdrum daily existence into a new carnival of colors, sights, and sounds. Although unfortunately, even the “bedtime stories” themselves don’t have much of a plot and are simply self-serving for Sandler’s character. Still, the visuals are sure to hold the fascination of young viewers, even when those over the age of twelve have tuned out.

With a career-making role for Russell Brand—if, that is, enough studio heads will watch it—giving him the sort of comedic push that puts him smack dab in the same British funnyman company of Steve Coogan, Simon Pegg, and Ricky Gervais, the film isn’t a complete nap, but like the story-centric family friendly Inkheart, it’s one that should’ve been a whole lot better. However, despite this and in honor of my nephew, I must admit that it’s still truly cool to see gumballs rain from the sky.