Happy Gilmore Is A Better Movie Than The Waterboy
Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy have the same star and screenwriters but the movies have a different comedic sensibility to them. They are both clearly Adam Sandler movies through and through but something shifted when Sandler movies started to make real money. Brandon Walker may have said it best when he said Sandler started running to the middle. Check out the box office totals of his first four starring efforts:
Billy Madison $25.6 Million
Happy Gilmore $38.8 Million
The Wedding Singer $80.2 Million
The Waterboy $161.5 Million
His movies started to be less mean-spirited and bizarre around the time The Wedding Singer came out. You aren't seeing clowns having brain aneurysms or Ben Stiller's cruel nursing home orderly after that. I'm not saying The Waterboy or Big Daddy aren't true Adam Sandler movies but they are a different side of Sandler.
Both movies have some pretty great supporting actors. Happy Gilmore has Ben Stiller, Carl Weather and the perfectly cast Christopher McDonald as Shooter McGavin. He is the ideal villain for this movie. He originally didn't want to do the movie as he was already being typecast as a smarmy asshole in movies. He changed his mind when they let him adlib some of his lines and he has said that working on Happy Gilmore was the best on set experience of his life.
The Waterboy has the Oscar winning Kathy Bates who does a great job herself. She's obviously a great actress (go check out Misery if you haven't seen it. It's terrifying and absolutely holds up) and it's nice to see her give a great effort. Some serious actors look down on comedies and do a half ass job. Bates is awesome here. Rob Schneider made the most of his cameo with one of the most iconic lines in Sandler movie history.
The movie stumbles with the other parts. Peter Dante is in over his head as the quarterback and I didn't like the rival coach either. Henry Winkler is a great actor but his coach character wasn't well-written or particularly funny. The bizarre Roy Orbison tattoo is great but his inner struggles about confrontation drag down the movie.
Brandon disagrees and says The Waterboy is better than Happy Gilmore. In conclusion and as always, Brandon is wrong. In this episode of DOUBLE PLAY, Brandon Walker and I do have the Happy Gilmore Vs.The Waterboy debate. You can watch the whole episode below or click HERE to listen: