It’s 1985. Robby Hart (Adam Sandler) is a wedding singer in a small New Jersey town. He makes $60.00 a gig singing on the weekends and receives meatballs as payment for singing lessons during the week. Julia (Drew Barrymore) is a waitress at the hall where Robby frequently does weddings. They meet and hit it off, but they’re both committed to other people. In fact, both are engaged to be married. Of course, they’re made for each other, but don’t realize it…yet.
I’ve stated before that one must disengage all sense of reality when watching a romantic comedy. You know who is supposed to fall in love with who. The movie’s job is to get them together in an interesting fashion. With that frame of mind, The Wedding Singer succeeds as a pretty good romantic comedy. If you’re looking for a deep inspection of what makes relationships succeed or fail, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Sandler’s movie career has consisted of a mostly up-and-down series of films. Bulletproof, the last with him in a starring role, was a fairly funny buddy comedy and the only one not written by Sandler and Tim Herlihy. Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, both written by Sandler and Herlihy, were often funny, but unevenly so. If one were to assess Sandler on the basis of these movies alone, he would probably be characterized as having a limited marketability and range. However, with the addition of The Wedding Singer to his credits, he may have actually gained a few points in the likability category. Sandler, for this film at least, tones down most (but not all) of his angry shouting for laughs. By tempering his outbursts with something bordering on acting, he makes the transition to leading man. Well, sort of.
Drew Barrymore handles her role with her usual likable flair. Nothing to fault her on at all. Angela Featherstone and Matthew Glave are slimy enough in their roles to elicit the proper emotional response from the audience. There’s no empathizing with these supposed “bad partners” ala last year’s Addicted to Love.
My only real complaint with the film, and it’s a small one, is the attempt to be a “look back” at the 1980s. The film takes place in 1985 and that fact is reiterated in what seems like hundreds of 80s references. Characters dress like Michael Jackson and Madonna. People are constantly singing songs like “Pass the Dutchie” or “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” A member of Robby’s band is androgynous in the style of Boy George or Dead or Alive’s Pete Burns. The hairstyles and the soundtrack’s use of 80s music does more than enough to establish the time period. Too much of a good thing borders on overkill.
All in all, The Wedding Singer is a sweet, likable movie featuring an unlikely pairing of stars. It’s never going to be confused with a great film in terms of innovation, but it knows what it is and does its job well.
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
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