Sweet romance rises above usual Sandler fare.

Rating: 10/10 (31 March 1999)

When someone was gushing to me about how great Titanic was, how it was a tragic love story, blah blah blah, I countered with this movie. Hey, why not? The characters have flaws, and it wasn't set so far in the past that everything was filtered through rose-colored glasses (get it, rose, ha ha I kill me). Adam Sandler fans don't seem to like this movie much, but I liked it better than all of his previous movies. So much so that I saw it in the theatre eight times. And I'm not a huge Adam Sandler fan (though I liked Happy Gilmore). What made this movie work was its emphasis on the romance.
Adam Sandler's lovable loser and Drew Barrymore's down-to-earth waitress are wonderful to watch. It goes through the emotion tugging before the eventual conclusion, but you still feel more for these characters than most would feel for a Jack or Rose. It's nice to see that Robbie isn't trying to get down Julia's pants (unlike his Fonzie-wannabe friend), instead being content with her company. They both seem unsure about their lives, placed at an age where they aren't kids anymore, but aren't quite adults either (despite Holly's comments). It makes all their fumbling around trying to find each other more believable.
I haven't seen a movie with cameos this hilarious in a long time. Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz and Billy Idol all make the scenes they're in stand out. Most of the rest of the humor in the movie involves making fun of fat people, old people, drunk people, and an assortment of society's losers. It's kind of disarming to see this sweet romance offset by this vile humor. But it works somehow, even though you sometimes laugh at something while thinking "I shouldn't be laughing at this!" (Like the fat lady gorging herself on wedding cake) As a satire of the 80s, it works mostly because it doesn't give the glow of nostalgia to everything.
When someone asked what my favorite movie of all time was I said this one. I don't really have a favorite, but it's nice to see a movie that doesn't have any pretensions about what it is, a funny romantic-comedy. Oh, and Drew Barrymore looks impossibly cute too.