The Wedding Singer

The Wedding Singer is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Frank Coraci, written by Tim Herlihy, and produced by Robert Simonds and Jack Giarraputo. The film stars Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, and Christine Taylor, and tells the story of a wedding singer in 1985 who falls in love with a waitress. The film was released on February 13, 1998. Produced on a budget of US$18 million, it grossed $123 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics. It is often ranked as one of Sandler's best comedies.
The film was later adapted into a stage musical of the same name, debuting on Broadway in April 2006 and closing on New Year's Eve of that same year. Jon Lovitz would reprise his role as Jimmie Moore in the episode of the same name of The Goldbergs, set during the events of The Wedding Singer, with Sandler, Barrymore and Billy Idol appearing through the use of archival footage. The film marks the first collaboration between Sandler and Barrymore, and is followed by 50 First Dates and Blended (the latter also directed by Coraci).
Robbie Hart is a wedding singer in Ridgefield, New Jersey in 1985, whose own wedding to his fiancée Linda is approaching. He meets and befriends Julia Sullivan, a new waitress at the reception hall where he works. Robbie promises to sing at her wedding, but her fiancé, businessman and bond investor Glenn Gulia, has yet to set a date.
On Robbie's wedding day, his sister Kate informs him as he waits at the altar that Linda has changed her mind about the wedding, leaving him humiliated and emotionally devastated. Later that day, Linda visits Robbie and reveals that she fell in love with him for his ambitions of being a rock star and hates the idea of being married to a wedding singer.
Robbie sinks into depression, causing his friends and family to be concerned. His best friend Sammy convinces him to return to work, but Robbie gives a depressed performance that is panned. He decides to give up wedding gigs and reneges on his promise to sing for Julia when Glenn finally sets a date.
However, Julia convinces him to help her with her wedding plans and their friendship blossoms. Julia's cousin, Holly, finds Robbie attractive and asks Julia for permission to date him. During a double date with Julia and Glenn, Robbie learns from Glenn that he cheats on Julia frequently and plans to continue after they are married.
Julia and Robbie grow confused by their deepening feelings for each other. After Holly tells Robbie that Julia is marrying Glenn for his security, Robbie unsuccessfully pursues a job at a bank. Julia is dismayed at his materialism, and when he accuses her of the same, she becomes angry with him. Depressed again, he decides to follow Sammy's example of only having shallow relationships with women. Sammy confides that he is unhappy with his lifestyle, and encourages Robbie to tell Julia how he feels about her. Sammy says that he used to idolize men like the Fonz, but he doesn't want to be a 50-year-old man “hitting on chicks”.
Meanwhile, Julia confides in her mother that she has fallen out of love with Glenn and has developed feelings for Robbie. Julia bursts into tears thinking about becoming "Mrs. Julia Gulia". Robbie arrives to declare his feelings, and sees her through her bedroom window in her wedding dress. Robbie doesn't know she is happily looking in the mirror pretending she has just married Robbie. Robbie assumes she is thinking of Glenn.
Heartbroken, Robbie leaves to get drunk and finds Glenn in the midst of his bachelor party, arm-in-arm with another woman. After a heated exchange, Glenn punches Robbie and mocks him. Robbie stumbles home and finds Linda waiting for him. She wants to reconcile, but Robbie passes out.
The following morning, Linda answers the door and introduces herself as Robbie’s fiancée to a crestfallen Julia. She runs to Glenn, who is sleeping off the events of the previous night, and tells him she wants to be married immediately. He half-heartedly offers to take her to Las Vegas.
Robbie awakens hungover and rejects Linda's reconciliation, having realized how shallow she is during his time with Julia, and kicks her out. At the 50th wedding anniversary party of his neighbor Rosie, to whom he has been giving singing lessons, he realizes he wants to grow old with Julia. Rosie encourages him to pursue her. Holly arrives, informs him of Julia's encounter with Linda and tells him Julia is eloping with Glenn. Robbie rushes to the airport and gets a first class ticket to Las Vegas.
After telling his story to his empathetic fellow passengers, which include Billy Idol, Robbie learns that Glenn and Julia are on the same flight. With the help of Billy and the flight crew, he sings over the loudspeaker a song he has written called "Grow Old with You", dedicated to Julia. Robbie enters the main cabin still singing. Glenn tries to assault him but is trapped in a lavatory by the flight attendants, Billy and a large passenger.
Robbie and Julia admit their love for each other, and share a kiss. Billy, impressed by Robbie's song, offers to tell his record company executives about him. Later, Robbie and Julia are married, and a band led by Robbie's friend David performs at their wedding.
Other notable appearances include future Queens of the Stone Age musician Michael Shuman as The Bar Mitzvah boy, screenwriter Steven Brill as Glenn's buddy, the film's own writer Timothy P. Herlihy as Rudy, a bartender, model Shanna Moakler as a flight attendant, and Al Burke played the large Billy Idol fan. Also appearing uncredited were Steve Buscemi as David Veltri, Jon Lovitz as Jimmie Moore, and Brian Posehn as Man at Dining Table #9, and Chauntal Lewis as Stuck-Up Girl at Bar Mitzvah.
The Wedding Singer is a 1980s nostalgia film. Adam Sandler had an idea for a comedy about a wedding singer who gets left at the altar, and suggested it to Tim Herlihy. Inspired by the radio show "Lost in the '80s" Herlihy decided to set the film in that decade. Herlihy had not set out to do anything different and thought the script was similar to his previous collaborations with Sandler. The changes came naturally, and he attributed the differences to his recently having gotten married, as well as the chemistry between Sandler and Barrymore. Herlihy was aware that Sandler's previous films had lacked a female perspective, and emphasized the importance of Barrymore. He explained that she was so great in her scenes that test audiences did not complain about Sandler not being in every scene as they had done for his previous films, and as a result more of her scenes survived and were included in the final film. Carrie Fisher, a frequent script doctor, was brought on to make the female part more balanced. Judd Apatow and Sandler also performed uncredited rewrites of the script.
Director Frank Coraci was friends with Sandler since they went to college at NYU and could hardly believe that he and his friends had the opportunity to make films together. Coraci had also gotten over his own experiences of romantic heartbreak a few years earlier and was able to look back on it differently and instead allow it to be funny. Coraci was a fan of director John Hughes and mentioned his films as an important influence.
Barrymore approached Sandler about working together on a film, saying they were "cinematic soulmates" before they had even worked together. Barrymore had a great relationship with Coraci, and praised him for balancing the broad comedy with the important moments of emotion and intimacy. Sandler would often make Barrymore laugh out of context, so that even after a long day, her laughs on camera would be real. In addition, she would not read or hear the songs until the first shoot so that her reactions would be more spontaneous.
Principal photography took place in California from February 3 to March 25, 1997.
The film had a budget of $18 million and made $123.3 million worldwide in ticket sales. It opened in second in the US with $18.8 million, behind holdover Titanic.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "It's decidedly uneven -- and surprisingly sappy for an early Adam Sandler comedy -- but The Wedding Singer is also sweet, funny, and beguiling." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
Leonard Klady of Variety wrote: "Director Frank Coraci and scripter Tim Herlihy work in concert to maintain a quality of farce rooted in human comedy." Roger Ebert gave the film a negative review and wrote: "The screenplay reads like a collaboration between Jekyll and Hyde."
Boy George responded to the film, saying that when he saw Alexis Arquette doing an impersonation of him and singing "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me", he thought it was hilarious.
The film has frequently been ranked as one of Sandler's best comedies.
Two soundtrack albums for the film, called The Wedding Singer and The Wedding Singer Volume 2, were released in 1998. While the film had the actors performing many of the songs, the soundtrack albums, for the most part, contained the original versions of the songs instead, as well as the songs that were in the background during the film and original songs and dialogue from it. Only for "Rapper's Delight" was its rendition (by Ellen Dow) used, in combination with the original recording.
The track listing of the first album is:
The track listing of the second album is:
Songs and renditions that appeared in the movie, but were not included in the soundtrack albums, were:
In 2006, a musical adaption of the same name was released on Broadway starring Stephen Lynch as Robbie and Laura Benanti as Julia. The show has had two national tours in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 respectively. It was nominated for five Tony Awards and eight Drama Desk Awards and received generally good reviews. In this show, the airplane scene with Billy Idol was replaced with a scene in Las Vegas where Robbie meets a Billy Idol impersonator, and they and a group of other impersonators including Ronald Reagan, Cyndi Lauper and Imelda Marcos come to convince Julia to give up Glenn. In addition, Robbie's neighbor Rosie is changed to be his grandma with whom he lives and who asks him to write a song out of a poem she wrote for the 50th anniversary party. Also Robbie's friend, Sammy, was changed from being a limousine driver to being a part of Robbie's band. The show only ran on Broadway for 284 performances but has become a popular show among community theaters and high schools.