The Waterboy drowns US box office

Adam Sandler, the comedy actor behind this year's sleeper hit The Wedding Singer, has flooded the American box office this weekend with his latest smash hit The Waterboy. Described by most US critics as akin to "root canal", the film nevertheless managed to break all box office records for the months of November and December with a jaw-dropping $39.1m take in just three days. Just to give you a watermark of the importance of such a figure, the second highest entry was the much-touted Bruce Willis/Denzel Washington actioneer The Siege, which limped in with a paltry $14.4m take. The Waterboy, which shows Sandler as a 30-year-old mama's boy who vents his repressed rage on the football field, has smashed the previous record held by fellow comedian Jim Carrey for his second instalment of Ace Ventura. It looks certain that Sandler will now join the rubber-faced megastar in the big-bucks A-league next year . . .