The Wedding Singer

In Frank Coraci’s film Robbie Hart sings at weddings in New Jersey in 1985. His own bride does not turn up, and he befriends Julia, a new waitress at the same hall. The idea came from Adam Sandler; Tim Herlihy wrote the script, setting it in the eighties after the radio show “Lost in the ’80s”. Carrie Fisher was brought in to balance the female side, and Judd Apatow and Sandler rewrote uncredited. By Herlihy’s account, test audiences did not complain about Sandler missing from scenes as they had on earlier films, so more of Drew Barrymore’s scenes stayed in the cut. Barrymore did not hear the songs until the first shooting day, to keep her reactions unprepared. Made for 18 million dollars, it took 123.3 million worldwide and opened second in America behind Titanic. At the 1998 MTV Movie Awards Barrymore and Sandler won Best Kiss, and Sandler was nominated for comic performance. On the soundtrack albums most songs appear in their original recordings rather than the on screen versions, the exception being Ellen Albertini Dow’s “Rapper’s Delight”. A good fit if you want to watch knowing how the female part grew in the writing and the cutting. Not for anyone who will take Robbie’s try at a bank job as a device; the middle leans on that calculation.