YMMV / The Waterboy

• Catharsis Factor:
  • After many years of Bobby being bullied and can't do anything about it, it is immensely satisfying to watch him finally let his rage all out by hard tackling every player holding the ball in each game.
  • It only gets better come the Bourbon Bowl championship game, where Bobby gets payback against Meaney, the Cougar player who tormented Bobby for his amusement while he was his teams' waterboy by giving him a punishing Powerbomb tackle that really knocks the hell of out of Meaney, who definitely felt that hit.
  • Coach Klein, who was intimidated by Coach Red into giving him the playbook and is then fired by him, starts creating new original plays that totally catches Red off guard and Red can only do nothing but express in frustration as Klein humiliates him like a fool and the tide of the game shifts in the Muddog's favor because of those with lastly the finisher is where Red cries in defeat like a man baby after Klein defeats him in the last seconds of the game of Bobby doing the final play is icing on the cake.
• Creepy Awesome: Vicky is a borderline sociopath, and an awesome girlfriend.
• Critical Dissonance: As usual for Sandler, the film was slammed hard by critics but was a huge hit with audiences. Sandler has said that, after that, he flat out stopped reading the reviews.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Rob Schneider's "Townie" character, aka the "You can do it!" guy.
  • Blake Clark as Farmer Fran. The first two on the list were so popular that they became Lawyer-Friendly Cameos to Little Nicky and Joe Dirt, respectively.
  • Clint Howard as Paco.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During the instant replay of Bobby's tackle, you can hear his opponent cry out "My leg!"
  • An Adorkable Louisianan football player leads an underdog team to an upset win against an undefeated team. Are we talking about Bobby Boucher and the Mud Dogs beating the Cougars at the Bourbon Bowl or Eli Manning and the New York Giants beating the New England Patriots at Super Bowl XLII? What's more, both teams won by 3 points (the Mud Dogs winning 30-27, and the Giants winning 17-14). Also, both games were monumental upsets over undefeated teams.
• Jerkass Woobie: Helen "Mama" Boucher, who smothered Bobby so much out of pain over her husband and Bobby's father abandoning them. You can see and feel the pain as she mouths the words "And a voodoo woman named Phyllis" from her husband's breakup note. To make it worse, Helen was still pregnant with Bobby when her husband left. After all this comes to light, she starts to redeem herself in the third act.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Waaaaaaaaater sucks! It really, really sucks! Waaaaaaaaaater sucks! It really, really SUUUUUUCKS!"
  • "Gayyyy-tor-raaaade!" "H2O"!
  • "You can do it!"
  • Likewise, "Oh no! We suck again!" has become a popular reaction when mediocre film or game series, or real-life sports teams, have a brief upswing in quality before returning to form.
  • "_____ is the DEVIL!"
  • Vicky's "Want me to kill them?" sign, which tends to be used jokingly when a Sacred Cow or a Woobie is attacked.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • Henry Winkler has said that many college football players have told him about their coaches playing the movie during bus rides to games.
  • Many people of Cajun/Creole extraction also enjoy the movie, because its cartoonishly inaccurate depiction of Louisiana culture is obviously good-natured (just don't expect the movie's stereotypes to be true-to-life should you visit there).
• One-Scene Wonder: Paul Wight, aka The Big Show, as "Captain Insane-O", who laughs so hard at the thought of 31-year-old Bobby being his waterboy that he cries.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A young Jennifer Taylor (Chelsea from Two and a Half Men) tries to hit on Bobby.
  • Lawrence Gilliard Jr. as Derek. Yes, fans of The Wire: D'Angelo Barksdale really did star in an Adam Sandler comedy in the late '90s.
• Signature Sound Effect: Bobby's iconic yell.
• The Woobie:
  • Bobby spent his whole life taking so much crap from everyone, that it shouldn't be surprising that there's so much built-up rage which helps him on the field .
  • Coach Klein, who went from brilliant assistant coach to a borderline Cloud Cuckoolander after Red Beaulieu stole the playbook he spent years making, so he could become head coach rather than Klein.

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