Surprisingly sweet

Rating: Null/10 (14 December 1999)

You know you're getting old when film-makers start making fun of 1985 fashions.
While many of us have been wondering what happened to last 15 years, director Frank Coraci and star Adam Sandler have woven a whole film with a mid-Eighties backdrop - ideal for the target audience who were in nappies while Live Aid rocked the world.
Sandler plays the eponymous crooner who falls for an impossibly sweet waitress (Drew Barrymore). It's the usual tale of boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy and girl may or may not get back together with the help of Billy Idol.
Okay, so the last bit may not be a well-worn cliche but you get the picture.
While Drew Barrymore has been a big screen regular since 1982, up until last summer, most movie goers this side of the pond were wondering Adam who? Then he scored his first crossover hit with this surprisingly charming comedy and things were never quite the same again.
Unlike previous big screen offerings, Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, Sandler and director Coraci kept the gags pretty clean and won millions of new fans as a result.
It helped that the script by Tim Herlihy received a polish from Carrie Fisher and the supporting cast boasted the talents of both Armageddon's Steve Buscemi and Saturday Night Live graduate Jon Lovitz.
Of course, one of the benefits of making a comedy from not so long ago is poking fun at an age when the internet in the home was a pipe dream and the future of many a top selling band hung in the balance, as Robbie (Sandler) pleads to his ex-girlfriend: "Now please get out of my Van Halen T-shirt before you jinx the band and they break up." Having grossed over $80million in the States alone, this low budget offering was the comedy hit of 1998 - at least until There's Something About Mary was released anyway.
New Line Cinema are so determined to hang onto America's hottest comedy property, they don't mind shelling out $20million a picture to keep the star on their books.
A cash driven sentiment reflected in The Wedding Singer.
"Well, we're living in a material world," remarks Robbie. "and I'm a material girl. Or Boy."