The Wedding Singer (1998)

Directed by Frank Coraci
Written by Tim Herlihy
Starring Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Christine Taylor, Allen Covert, Matthew Glave

My Advice: Wait and Rent It.

Return with us to the glory days of the 80's!  Listen to those classic tunes (a lot of which make you cringe and break out in hives)!  Put on some clothes you had forgotten lurked in the back of your closet like a dirty secret waiting to be unearthed by Kenneth Starr!  Sounds about as promising as sitting down for a viewing of the director's cut of Batman and Robin, hey?  But fear not!  You're going there with Adam Sandler (complete with rock guy hairdo) and Drew Barrymore, and it doesn't suck.  Sandler is Robbie, a wedding singer.  In fact, he's the best wedding singer in the business.  He's about to have his own wedding to rock chik Linda (Angela Featherstone) but he had to go and meet perfect-for-him Julia (Barrymore), who's about to marry the guy who your girlfriend always seems to leave you for, Glenn (Glave).  Whatever shall a guy do?

Well, let me talk about the couple first.  Sandler is fairly amusing as Robbie.  And I don't just mean his "uneven" love song or his stirring rendition of "Love Stinks", I mean that he's actually making some kind of a stab at leading man acting, and it pretty much works.   Barrymore is quite the cute one and plays her naive, torn between two lovers character quite well.  But if there's one thing this film does, and to a fault I might add, is beat you over the head with things.  "Look! WHAP! An 80's reference!  Boy, weren't we silly buggers back then?  And look! WHAP!  Another 80's song!  Doesn't it make you wanna buy both soundtracks?"  It's funny for a while, but eventually it wears rather thin.  Also, don't go into this film expecting any nifty variations on the "This couple really needs to get it together" storyline.  The trailer (as always) spelled out everything for you beforehand, much like a dumbshow before a play.  Still, on the whole, it's made up for by Sandler and Barrymore's likability, and also that when it actually hits an 80's joke square on the nose, it's funny as hell.  Especially a nice cameo at the end by a celeb who shall here go nameless.  Grab a date, grab this movie.  End of story.