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Adam Sandler is one of Hollywood’s most enduring comedic actors. His career includes early successes like “Happy Gilmore” and more recent streaming hits like “Murder Mystery” on Netflix, among many others. Everyone’s career has to start somewhere though and his started in a little-remembered comedy called “Going Overboard.” That movie also happened to feature a relatively young Billy Bob Thornton.
Decades before he would appear as an oil man in Taylor Sheridan’s hugely successful Paramount+ drama “Landman,” Thornton played the role of Dave in 1989’s “Going Overboard.” It was Sandler’s very first movie, playing the lead. Thornton, meanwhile, had a relatively minor part to play in the comedy, which was written and directed by Valerie Breiman. Perhaps not coincidentally, she didn’t work a whole lot as a director in Hollywood after this movie came out.
The movie centers on a struggling young comedian named Shecky (Sandler) who takes a low-level job on a cruise ship where he hopes to get his big break in as a cruise ship comedian. Things get out of control when a general named Noriega (Burt Young) sends some hit men aboard the ship to kill a beauty queen because she made a mockery of him.
This was a truly early stepping stone for Sandler, even before he was hired (and eventually fired) from “Saturday Night Live” in the ’90s. The legendary sketch show helped make him a household name but in a lot of ways, his Hollywood career started here. Sadly, it’d be difficult to call it a great start.
Going Overboard was a disaster in its day
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“Going Overboard” is one of the lowest-rated movies ever on IMDb. Critics of the day discounted it and just about any Google result related to it brings one to an unkind retrospective review or a post on Reddit in which someone is baffled by just how bad the movie is. “This has to be one of the worst pieces of s*** I’ve ever seen,” a post in the r/badmovies subreddit reads. “If you want to cringe, watch this.”
The movie’s release was fairly unremarkable. It was in the era of video stores ruling the world and it was undoubtedly made with the hope that people would rent it at Blockbuster Video thanks to the cover art, which featured a couple of women in swimsuits on a boat alongside Adam Sandler looking fairly ridiculous.
As for Billy Bob Thornton, he had a relatively small role as one of the people on the cruise ship. There’s a scene in which his character Dave is sitting in the audience during one of Shecky’s comedy shows, with the two interacting a bit. It’s undoubtedly not a movie either of them is particularly proud of, looking back on their careers, but budding actors can’t afford to be too choosy.
Plus, it all worked out quite well for both of them. Sandler went on to become a true comedy star in the world of stand up and movies. As for Thornton, his career took off in the aftermath of 1996’s “Sling Blade,” which won him an Oscar for Best Screenplay as well as a Best Actor nomination. He’s worked very steadily in the three decades since.
You can stream “Going Overboard” on Amazon Prime Video.