Few things in this world are harder to understand than what Adam Sandler was thinking as he slapped together his multi-regionalist accent for The Waterboy--few things, that is, apart from the popularity of the routinely unfunny comedy in which that accent appears.

Despite my inability to recommend The Waterboy on its aesthetic merits, however, I have to say that watching the film managed to fill three distinct chinks in my cultural armor--armor that I am usually too lazy to take care of because it takes so much effort to keep up with the latest trends in greaves and breastplates.

Here then, are the three things that I can promise you will get out of watching The Waterboy:

1) You will, at long last, have seen The Waterboy

Are you tired of having conversations with your friends in which they keep assuming that you have seen The Waterboy? They feed you a line that you have deduced must be from the film and expect you to respond to it with the appropriate line from the film, which you can actually do because you've seen them do it with each other dozens of times. Only you don't want to deliver the line because you don't have any idea what it means. If you had seen the film, you would understand the appropriateness of the predetermined response, but it doesn't feel quite right to participate without that understanding.

So you don't deliver the line. And everybody in the office or around the copy machine or at the lunch counter turns to you and says, "When are you going to watch The Waterboy anyway? Don't be so stuck up. It's hilarious." And you want to tell them that everything's okay, that perhaps the time for watching The Waterboy has passed. With your luck, the day after you watch the film, everybody will be quoting lines from something else. You'll be able to live with yourself, you assure your friends, if the popularity of quoting lines from The Waterboy dies out before you ever quite get a chance to participate.

But you can't play it like that, homey. It's gotten too serious. Your friends are personally offended that you never watched The Waterboy; they're hurt. It's not that you don't have faith in their cinematic tastes, which they know you don't. It's because you're refusing to show your sanction of the behavior of the group. Don't you see? You owe it to your community to see The Waterboy so that you can participate in the quoting without reminding the folks participating that you're kinda sorta maybe holding them the teenciest bit in contempt.

You're a team player. Don't rock the boat. See the film.

2) You'll understand just what they were thinking when they decided to put Dan Fouts in the same booth as Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football

Tired of staying up wondering why the boys at ABC thought it would be funny for Americans to tune in weekly and watch Al Michaels struggling to minimize the anti-charisma that Dan Fouts and Dennis Miller manage to generate between them? Don't you think they sort of blew it by firing Boomer Esiason, undeniably the very worst football commentator it has ever been our nation's collective misery to endure, before giving us a chance to see him in the booth with Dennis Miller? When you see Fouts' interaction with Brent Musburger in The Waterboy, you will understand what made the execs at ABC think Fouts was the right choice.

Apparently, they were under the impression that in the movie Fouts was acting.

3) You will renew your appreciation of the spritely intelligence of Kathy Bates

"So I saw this great film with Kathy Bates . . ."
"Kathy Bates! I love her. Did you see her in Misery?

I don't know that I ever get to finish a sentence about Kathy Bates because everyone loves her. The people I know love her so much that they can't keep themselves from interrupting one another to extol her virtues whenever she is mentioned.

And yeah, I like her to. But she's become so popular with so many people that I'll admit I sometimes forget how important it is to continue to appreciate her. In The Waterboy, she quite brilliantly takes it upon herself to try to make some kind of sense out of the accent that Adam Sandler uses throughout the film. It's supposed to be Cajun, I guess, though there's really no telling. So she carefully selects pronunciations of words that compromise halfway between a reasonably authentic kind of Cajun and the absurd pentecostal babble that Sandler insists on spitting at her. She's his mother, after all; people have to see where that accent could have come from.

Oh, and she has a blast with her role. It's a stupid role with a lot of repeat jokes, but no matter how many times the director makes her go through the motions of the same gag, she makes an effort to find something funny in the schtick herself before delivering it. And she's so charismatic that she almost convinces you to forgive the writers who have put her in such an awkward position to begin with. She's really amazing, and I think we all know that we discover our favorite actors and actresses only through seeing them in terrible films. Bates' genuine playfulness absolutely sparkles against the backdrop of Sandler's phony hilarity.

BONUS REASONS TO WATCH: The script--and some other things worth mentioning

Perhaps the best thing about watching The Waterboy is that it will put you in an ideal situation for appreciating Mangiotto's brilliant essay* on the film, a review that had me howling with laughter through two back-to-back readings. Having praised his work, however, I want to take issue with Walter on his assertion of the film's absolute worthlessness.

I think there is something good about the structure of comedies like The Waterboy, films that, like the Zucker comedies, at least attempt to deliver us something giggle-worthy every ten or fifteen seconds. The reason I can tolerate The Waterboy's reliance on jokes that are repeated too often is that it shows the director to be aware of the importance of being funny in movies that are supposed to be funny. I won't say that Mel Brooks is always funny, but I will say he demonstrates an awareness of how much I expect him to be funny. Three out of four jokes that he hits me with are losers, but they keep him working toward that fourth. More and more makers of comedy seem to be subscribing to the notion that a funny film only needs one big laugh every thirty minutes or so. And instead of keeping the titters alive with a few small jokes in between, we get thirty-minute doses of schmaltzy drama stolen straight from Leave It To Beaver. At least when filmmmakers repeat their jokes, they put pressure on the actors to do something funny. "No, don't make me repeat that stupid line again. I've got something else to share, something funny. I stayed up all night thinking about this routine involving a styrofoam replica of Stone Henge and a dwarf."

I don't think Sandler is particularly funny in The Waterboy or any of his films. But at least in The Waterboy his humorlessness is not for lack of trying. Every now and then, you just have to give 'em an A for effort.

Well, okay, maybe just a C.

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*Here's the link to a review that is funny if you haven't seen the film, but perfect if you have:
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-3480-895413E-397D6876-prod1

Recommended: Yes