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Waterboy (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Buena Vista Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (8th September 2009). |
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The Film
 Looking back on Adam Sandler’s career it’s not hard to see how long ago it was that he really genuinely made me laugh. At first I wanted to reminisce on his glory days, but honestly they didn’t last for that many movies, sure he had “Billy Madison” (1995) and “Happy Gilmore” (1996) which hold a good place in my youth, but looking on the rest of his filmography, other than “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002) I have trouble pinpointing whether or not he had a downslide considering he has 3-4 really watchable movies and the rest I just forget about or write off as just another Adam Sandler movie. The easiest way to pinpoint his comedy slide would just to look at “The Waterboy” (1998) that just tried to bank on his character of silly voice man does silly things. Yet it’s hard to criticize “The Waterboy” for not holding up considering I don’t have the greatest memories of laughing at Sandler to begin with. Sandler plays Bobby Boucher Jr., the titular waterboy who is fired from his job of providing water to the fictional Louisiana football team. After briefly losing his way thanks to the taunting of football players and even his beloved Captain Insano (Paul “The Big Show” Wight), Bobby goes to the worst team around to try to be their waterboy. Thanks to the mildly insane Coach Klein (Henry Winkler), Bobby finds a spot on the team as the waterboy. After getting picked on again by this new team, Coach Klein encourages him to fight back and he earns a spot on the team as a defensive player who starts bringing the team success with his ability to tackle anybody by harnessing his rage. Unfortunately for Bobby, his momma (Kathy Bates) doesn’t like the idea of bobby playing football or going to college and fears losing her son like she lost her husband. Bobby still continues to play for the team behind his mother’s back as well as hiding his relationship with Vicki Vallencourt (Fairuza Balk), who his momma has termed as the devil. The biggest credit to the movie, and the closest the movie comes to getting laughs, comes through the return of Henry Winkler to the public eye that would lead to his turn in “Arrested Development” (2003-2006). It’s also crazy seeing Fairuza Balk all grown up considering my best memories of her are in the terrifying children’s movie “Return to Oz” (1985) or as a neo nazi girlfriend in “American History X” (1998). Sandler’s performance is basically a more sheltered Billy Madison who never moves beyond his drunken funny-voice phase at the beginning of that movie. Kathy Bates is there too in a supporting role, but her character really isn’t that funny and is only important to the plot in terms of giving some sort of conflict in the movie. The biggest surprise may be looking back at the movie and seeing Larry Gillard Jr. in one of his earlier roles before he made more of a face on “The Wire” (2002-2008). It’s odd to think that the film was directed by Frank Coraci around the exact time of “The Wedding Singer” (1998) and helps to demonstrate the beginning of Adam Sandler overexposure that has turned him into more of an annoyance than anything else. Most of his directing doesn’t do anything more than cut around to the right actors at the right moment and provide some fantasy sequences. It’s hard to demand much more out of a director considering the movie is just a big studio production to show off Sandler’s comedy and so just coverage of actors at the right time, along with the visualizations of Bobby’s rage. It may not be as bad as “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” (2007) since it lacks the homophobia and actually gets two more laughs out of me than the zero that “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” delivered. It was apparently a huge success for Sandler’s career considering it made bundles of money, over $160 million, but is a shocking use of $23 million considering how relatively plain the movie is. Sure there are a few visual effects used to put people’s heads on different bodies to give bobby the rage, but there’s not much more. It’s success could also be a result of how “Happy Gilmore” and “Billy Madison” became more popular on video, making him a bankable comedy star, even if he wasn’t funny anymore.
Video
Presented in 1080p 24/fps with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio and AVC MPEG-4 encoding, the image is above quality for a simple up conversion of the DVD but doesn’t quite achieve the great image that I would expect. Though the image is surprisingly clear, the colors seem a bit more muddied over the course of the film. Still, the image is really crisp and clean, even if the colors feel a little lacking. There’s a little bit of grain but it doesn’t interfere with anything and it doesn’t turn sour, making for just good texture rather than an interference from a bad transfer.
Audio
With an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, the sound does about the same as the visual with a really clean transfer for a bad soundtrack featuring the likes of Lenny Kravitz (even if there are some overused classics by John Lee Hooker or Earth Wind & Fire). There’s no little problems like muddied colors, but has a clean soundtrack has a good mix that puts together the soundtrack and dialogue in good balance. There are no moments of sound dropping out, or bad mixing of a crowd and football noises with the soundtrack. Additionally there are a large number of alternative audio and subtitle options: French DTS 5.1, French (Quebec) Dolby Digitial 5.1, Russian Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese Dolby Digital 2.0 surround. For subtitles there are English, English for the Hearing Impaired, French (Quebec), Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Ukrainian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Icelandic listed on the menu while my Blu-ray player finds extra French, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian subtitle tracks in addition that don’t seem to work.
Extras
This might be the barest of the bare bones Blu-rays I have ever seen. It reminds me of the early days of DVD when special features were scene selection and audio setup, since that’s all that’s on the disc. There are literally 3 buttons on the menu, and none of them link to special features. Is Sandler ashamed of the movie? Or was the studio too excited to crank out the movie onto Blu-ray that it ignored that side of everything. What I’m trying to say is there’s nothing here.
Overall
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