Our favourite ever RomCom here at Barking Mad About Films is the 1998 comedy The Wedding Singer.It stars Adam Sandler, who it would be fair to say is not the most loved of actors/comedians on the Internet.
We’re not sure why? It appears a couple of backfiring hits have culminated in it going out of control with the amount of hate for Pixels, A film we personally didn’t think was THAT bad. You can find our review here:
Then it got worse when he got a huge payday to make films exclusively for Netflix, the first The Ridiculous 6 was attacked for racism, sexism and any other ISM the bottom of the internet could think of!
We have always given him the benefit of the doubt, the first time we became aware of him was in ‘Airheads’ in 1994. We had seen his ’93 film ‘Coneheads’ but can’t remember him in it at all!
Everything really changed with Billy Madison in 1995, his golf comedy Happy Gilmore & action movie Bulletproof in 1996, big hits stateside and big rentals in the UK, but it was The Wedding Singer that put him in the mainstream.
From the writer of Madison and Gilmore, Tim Herlihy, the film centres on Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) a wedding singer, who loves weddings and dreams of getting wed himself, to his long-term partner Linda (Angela Featherstone)
At one of his wedding gigs, he and his best friend, Sammy (Allen Covert) meet Julia (Drew Barrymore) a new waitress to the wedding circuit and a friendship is immediately made.
Julia invites them to a party held by her Wall Street trading fiancé Glen (Matthew Glave) and it is clear he is not very likeable, which clearly upsets Robbie, who wants the best for his new friend.
But that becomes the least of Robbie’s worries when Linda leaves him at the altar, claiming she loved Robbie, the heavy metal singer and not the dull wedding singer.
Robbie heads back to work far too soon when Sammy talks him into taking a Wedding job, where he breaks into ‘Love Stinks’, a cover of the J. Geils Band.
He soon finds some happiness as his friendship grows when agreeing to share all his knowledge of wedding suppliers with Julia bringing the 2 closer together, and it is clear the 2 are meant for each other, from the way they are around with each other.
On a double date with Julia’s sister, Holly (Christine Taylor) we see that Glen is a bit of a nasty piece of work when he confesses to constantly cheating on Julia to Robbie.
We then see how Robbie reacts, and with the help of Sammy and his friends and Billy Idol win the love and heart of Julia.
We love this film, it has a great story, unlike some RomComs, which we have blogged about before, both partners that are left by the leads weren’t suitable for them, so you do want Robbie & Julia to get together.
It has so many great characters, Alexis Arquette as George, a huge Boy George fan; Ellen Albertini Dow as Rosie,n elderly a HipHop and classic singer, who has been getting singing lessons from Robbie, paying him in meatballs!
We also get 2 great cameos from Jon Lovitz as Jimmie Moore, a rival wedding singer and Steve Buscemi as Dave, who is a great guitar player who has far too much to drink.
Backed up with some great Eighties pop culture references with mentions from Happy Days to Miami Vice and an even better 80’s soundtrack, this is a very good example of a Romantic Comedy done well.
Sandler would follow this up with Big Daddy and The Waterboy 2 of his other films we really enjoy. Since then he has done some good and some bad films. If you have seen one of those bad ones, but never seen the Wedding Singer, you could do a lot worse than give it a try.
The Wedding singer may have never got a sequel but it does live on with a touring stage show. Adam and Drew would also team up again, but never quite match the Wedding Singer’s success with 50 First Dates and Blended (Blended also coming from the same director Frank Coraci)
What is your favourite Romantic Comedy? Do you have a favourite Sandler film, we would love to hear from you
Find the film at Amazon here:
Details of the UK touring show can be found here: