Waterboy
Buena Vista
1.85:1(NON ANAMORPHIC)/Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby 2.0
90 Minutes
Rated:PG-13
Region:1
Dual Layer:No
Reviewed on a Panasonic A110
The Waterboy
Recently, Roger Ebert put Peter Berg's upcoming violent thriller "Very Bad Things" into a new category called "New Geek Cinema" lumping it together with some of the "Pulp Fiction"-ish films that have come after Quentin Tarantino's cult hit.
Comedian Adam Sandler has also brought together his own new genre. I call it "New Idiot Cinema". It's almost fascinating, really, how Sandler has sculpted this sort of comedy over the past few years, starting with the idiot hit "Billy Madison", which was simply a drunken romp to "Happy Gilmore", which had Sandler in a bit bigger film, still drunk, still sloppy, still angry(witness the infamous fistfight with Bob Barker during "Gilmore".)
Then, suddenly, "The Wedding Singer" decided to sculpt Sandler into a romantic lead actor. He put away his childish voice and romanced Drew Barrymore. Major hit. Sandler has really struck into a very simple formula, I think. Take "Happy Gilmore", add a girl who would never in real life be attracted to Sandler's character, have them fall in love, add a little bathroom humor, some anger, and have some sort of morals added in for a happy ending.
For the audience, apparently it worked very well, looking at the box office numbers for "Waterboy"'s opening weekend. It's unfortunate that the film itself really doesn't work as well as Sandler's previous sports film, "Happy Gilmore." Working with the same crew that put together "The Wedding Singer", Sandler tries to put in a little bit of "Happy Gilmore" with this story about a college football Waterboy who, the team realizes, has an incredible talent for tackling. The only problem is that the Waterboy is 31 years old and has been living with his mother in the swamps all his life. He's uneducated and socially, well, not too well off.
It works well sometimes, as Sandler's character tries to harness the anger that's built up inside and take it out on the members of the opposing team. It's when he appologizes to the opposing players after smashing into them that the film loses a little bit. Sandler has always been wonderful with his rage, such as in "Happy Gilmore" when he suddenly takes off and hits game show host Bob Barker with an upper cut to the jaw, in an almost classic bit. Here the film is trying to go a little too sweet for the subject of a football player who can clobber the opposing team. Maybe it's just that, and maybe it's the fact that some of the jokes, as well as Kathy Bates's performance, just don't really work. Not that I don't give Bates major credit for trying a role like this, it's just that she doesn't really work well in the film as the mother of Sandler's character. The football scenes are well done and enjoyable, and Henry Winkler is somewhat ok as the coach. Sandler himself is somewhat annoying throughout, taking his "baby talk" gimmick to new levels of utterly annoying. But, like "The Wedding Singer", no matter how stupid the film really is, there's something charming in the film and it's characters and no matter how much you're set against it, by the end you'll likely find yourself laughing and charmed by the film, especially a star-making performance by Fairuza Balk("The Craft", etc), who has previously made a career of playing the bad or even evil girl. In this film, she actually smiles. If you've seen her past roles, you would likely understand what a big leap that is. She doesn't quite achieve the major turnaround that Drew Barrymore started with "The Wedding Singer", but you can sense that with her first smile in this film, things are already in the works for her on bigger and better films than she's been on recently. All in all, "The Waterboy" isn't a great film. It's not even Sandler's best film(that would be "Happy Gilmore") but at least it's fun throughout.
THE DVD:
IMAGE: The 1.85:1 letterboxed image is non-anamorphic and on a single layer disc. Although the image quality is excellent, anamorphic enhancement would have made it nearly flawless. Colors, and there are quite a few of them in "The Waterboy". The reds and yellows of the uniforms, the strong blues of the sky, green of the grass, all the colors used are rendered excellently and look incredibly vivid on this disc. The color quality is just as realistic and
defined here as it was when I viewed the film in theaters last November. Images are crisp, wonderfully clear and razor sharp; detail in the image is excellent. Contrast as well as color saturation are very good and frequently excellent. The scenes on the football fields are stunning, with impressively strong colors and absolutely no artifacts. In terms of artifacts, well, there aren't any. Anywhere. No pixelization, no shimmering, no nothing. Flesh
tones are consistently excellent throughout. Black level in the picture is very good and nicely defined. Colors, again, are incredible on this disc, with perfect saturation. Disney continues to impress with these non-anamorphic transfers, and although this isn't anamorphic, it's certainly an incredibly fantastic transfer, as close to the quality of anamorphic presentation I've seen from a
non-anamorphic transfer.
SOUND: Impressive. When the coach makes a speech in front of the students of the college, you can hear the detailed echo of his words. This isn't always a very enveloping soundtrack in terms of action, but there are certainly a whole lot of excellent aspects to it. The football scenes are done quite well, with strong action when the players tackle or hit each other during the action. The songs and score both sound wonderful, with songs from
Lenny Kravitz, The Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rush, Goldfinger and more. All of these songs sound excellent; fully and richly rendered. Dialogue is also very pleasantly done; natural and clear. Ambient noise is clear and natural, and there are also some nice instances where full-sounding bass comes into play. All in all, a pleasing presentation.
EXTRAS: Again, this is where Disney fails time and time again and they've thrown in something here that I hope they don't think is enough to satisfy DVD owners looking for extras. Normally, DVDs from Disney and their branches such as Miramax only include a trailer. Here, we get a production featurette that is about as long as the trailer, which only has a few interviews and quite a few scenes from the trailer. Nothing too terribly exciting. It would have
been nice to hear a commentary from the cast and crew on what it was like to have a sudden huge box office hit like this come out of nowhere or maybe some deleted scenes or outtakes( outtakes are usually quite excellent in comedies such as this), but still no luck. The only discs that Disney releases with extras are still the overpriced Collector's Editions. The extremely short length of the featurette made me feel as if this is Disney throwing us leftovers.
MENUS: Nice, with images from the movie, but no animation or creativity was used in the making of this menu.
OVERALL: If you enjoyed the movie(and there are about 150 million dollars worth of tickets sold that says quite a few of you did), then I'm sure you'll enjoy this disc.
The image quality is excellent and the sound quality is quite good as well. But if you haven't seen it or aren't sure, I'd recommend a rental. Still, some real extras would have been nice.
Grades:
The Movie:B-
Video Quality:A
Sound Quality:B+
Extras:D+
Menus:D+
Overall:B+
