MY MOVIE SHELF: The Wedding Singer

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 141  Days to go: 96

Movie #297:  The Wedding Singer

Just over a year ago, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and sang a little ditty about how they make a movie together every ten years or so, and Sandler surprised Drew by winding it up with a sweet “grow old with you” line from the little ditty he sings her at the end of The Wedding Singer. It’s so sweet and charming and lovely, and it strikes right at the heart of Adam Sandler’s strengths.

The reason The Wedding Singer is such a great, successful romantic comedy is because of its heart — and its Robbie Hart. Robbie Hart is Sandler’s character, and he is completely adorable and kind-hearted here. He’s sweet and honest, open and caring, and there’s absolutely none of the obnoxious, jaded cynicism he brings to a lot of his other movies. In fact, the character of Robbie Hart has no use for the woman-chasing, woman-objectifying, woman-using types of guys exemplified by Glenn (Matthew Glave), fiancé to Barrymore’s Julia. (Once again, it’s a movie wherein the sweet object of our hero’s affection is in a relationship with a duplicitous male, making it all the more acceptable for our hero to break them up, but the movie does it well and authentically on an emotional level, so I’ll allow it.) It’s completely a story of true friendship and affection, genuinely liking the person you fall in love with and in that making all the difference.

Of course, Robbie is just as delightful when he’s maudlin and suicidal. His song “Somebody Kill Me” is easily my favorite moment of a film — a film full of wonderful moments, really — because it’s so hilariously funny and also so exactly like what it feels like to be summarily dumped the way he was. It’s brilliant and awesome and I love it. (His “Love Stinks” is also pretty great.)

The ’80s setting also provides a lot of fun, from the outfits to the songs to the way all Robbie and Julia’s friends emulate some sort of 1980s pop icon. Glen’s all about Miami Vice (and he drives a freakin’ DeLorean, for the crying out loud), Holly (Christine Taylor) is a lacy, boytoy-era Madonna wannabe, Sammy (Allen Covert) wears a red leather Michael Jackson jacket (AND SEQUINNED GLOVE), and George (Alexis Arquette) is basically in permanent Boy George cosplay. On top of that, you’ve got little old lady Rosie (Ellen Albertini Dow) throwing down “Rapper’s Delight,” some dude with a serious Flock of Seagulls obsession, Jon Lovitz passing for a pretty believable nightmare wedding singer, and Billy Fucking Idol himself cameoing as the beautiful rock god he was, guzzling champagne, sneering at people, making jerkoff gestures at douchebags and enticing the occasional mature older woman into joining the Mile High Club. It’s a great movie, is what I’m saying. (The only slip up is Julia wearing a dress and combat boots out to the club. I promise you it was 1992 AT LEAST before anyone was rocking that look.)

The Wedding Singer is sweet and wonderful, start to finish, with a positive attitude and a full heart on its sleeve. It knows that loving someone enough to marry them means wanting to grow old with them and to share all those little moments that make up a lifetime together. It’s about doing things to make your partner happy, because you know your partner is doing things to make you happy, and because seeing your partner happy does make you happy. And it’s about finding someone to hold you and be there for you always, to be your best friend and most cherished companion.

And if that’s not enough for you, well, then at least you finally know you can thank Robbie’s ex-fiancée for breaking up Van Halen.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Mr. Deeds

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 191  Days to go: 192

Movie #186:  Mr. Deeds

I don’t get this movie at all. It’s supposed to be sweet but it falls pretty flat. It’s supposed to be funny but it’s not all that funny. And there are about a dozen plot points that never actually go anywhere.

Adam Sandler is Longfellow Deeds, a small town all-around nice guy who is the last living relative of billionaire Preston Blake (Harve Presnell). He inherits $40billion but for some reason he only gets it if he sells his shares of stock to the other board members of the company Blake owned. This part doesn’t make any sense, because the guy was obviously rich outside the company (he owns the New York Jets, for one, but that’ll come up later), but no explanation is given as to why he has to do this.

Winona Ryder plays Babe Bennett, a tabloid reporter for an Inside Edition-esque show who goes undercover as some helpless school nurse from Iowa in order to get close to Deeds. No idea why she has to do this either, but okay. She streaks her hair blonde for the purpose, though, so it must be really important. Of course, when footage leaks from their dates that only “Pam” AKA Babe could’ve taken, Deeds is completely dumbfounded as to how the tabloid show got it. He’s also apparently never read a book or seen a TV show, because Babe’s cover story is thin.

Now, Adam Sandler is dodgy enough in romantic comedies. I’ve only ever seen him successful in ones with Drew Barrymore, presumably because Drew is incredibly charming, the two have obvious affection for one another, and the pairing brings out the best things in Sandler. Winona Ryder, on the other hand, should not make romantic comedies. It’s not that she can’t be funny or that she isn’t an honestly talented actress, it’s just that she doesn’t have the particular type of comedy gene that works in romantic comedies — she’s not the right combination of sweet/jaded/wacky. If anything, Winona’s comedy genes are far more wry, erudite and self-deprecating, with a smattering of naiveté. It works in something like Mermaids or Beetlejuice or Heathers or even Reality Bites, but not in the kind of goofy-sweet films Adam Sandler attempts. It’s a poor combination.

Mr. Deeds features all sorts of odd casting, though. John Turturro is “very, very sneaky” butler Emilio, who is perhaps closer to Blake than anyone suspected — all possibilities of which are bizarre, no matter how you slice it. Peter Gallagher is ambiguously nefarious board member Chuck Cedar, who it is clear wants Deeds to sell his company shares for malicious purposes, but those purposes are never really clarified, nor is it clear why the acquisition of companies Cedar supposedly wants would require all the company’s fifty thousand current employees to be fired. But I guess conflict has to come from somewhere? It’s really dumb.

Conchata Ferrell is also around, mostly as a lovely friend and coworker from Deeds’s hometown, who near the end is needlessly turned into a punchline about having wanted to be a man. And Steve Buscemi wears horrible contact lenses that give him huge, wandering eyeballs that are frankly unsettling. But, boy is it hilarious when he doesn’t know where he’s looking! (Warning: Not hilarious at all.)

The movie is scattered and ambiguous at best, really. There’s the whole black foot Deeds got from “wicked bad frostbite” that is little more than an oddity on its own, but when seen in conjunction with Emilio’s foot fetish it’s as if the writers honestly couldn’t think of anything funnier than feet. Then there’s the Jets quarterback who comes in cussing about his contract, about which Deeds beats him up and then fires him, but nothing really comes of it at all except for the quarterback being forced to call and apologize by his father. It’s not a loose end, per se, but it feels like an incredibly elaborate set up for such a weak pay off. And of course, Chuck Cedar conspires with the tabloid show host (Jared Harris) to — do what, exactly? Expose that Pam is really Babe? I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help either the show or Chuck, but the movie paints it as if it does.

There is just time after time after time that the film makes incredibly dumb or nonsensical choices — even for a silly comedy engineered to be that way — and it honestly ruins the character of Longfellow Deeds who is actually a sweet, honorable and trusting man who is, truth be told, sort of a refreshing stretch for Sandler. Why the filmmakers would undermine that, though, is beyond me.

I don’t get this film at all, and I’m not sure why we have it.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Happy Gilmore

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 241 Days to go: 245

Movie #136: Happy Gilmore

If you’ve ever tried to think back, wondering when it was that Adam Sandler was really, truly funny, I can tell you right now that time was 1996.

“But, wait,” you say. “That was all the way back at the very beginning of his film career, right after he left SNL. He did so many movies after that.”

“Yes,” I agree, “but were any of them as funny as Happy Gilmore? No.”

Adam Sandler has never lived up to the potential he showed in Happy Gilmore, and I say that as someone who used to adore him on SNL and who owns several of his movies. Either one of the two I own in which he pairs with Drew Barrymore (50 First Dates and The Wedding Singer) would be my favorite over Happy Gilmore, but those are sweet and romantic in their way. Happy Gilmore isn’t sweet or romantic, really, despite an easy subplot about hooking up with PGA Tour PR person Virginia (Julie Bowen, looking like she just stepped off a bus from Indiana or somewhere similar and got a job in a movie. She’s soooo innocent and young here.); it doesn’t have to be sweet or romantic. It’s just funny.

I have a theory on how that happens. I mean, you take a funny/weird guy like Sandler and put him in a movie that he wrote because he’s the one you’re banking on. It has some acting out and some childish humor and some real iconic moments (“The price is wrong, Bob.”), and it makes millions of dollars, so you let him write another movie with weird acting out and/or childish behavior and a few weird catchphrases because that’s all people want or remember, right? Then you put him in another, and he’s making serious bank at this point so he thinks he’s a big deal and a smart guy. He starts leveraging his power to make sure all his friends are in his movies and he gets to ad lib a bunch of stuff and put his production company in charge of the whole thing and before you know it he’s doing shit like Jack and Jill or whatever, but not before completely burning out on his “serious” work, AKA Funny People, which, as far as titles go, got the second half right, at least: there were people in the film.

But Happy Gilmore was the spark that caught fire. Billy Madison was seen, a little bit, and certain types of people surely seem to like it, but Happy Gilmore was the one that really made Sandler a name for himself. And aside from it being one of the first in a long line of films whose schtick stopped being funny a while ago, the reason I really think it succeeds here is it had a simple, meaningful plot. It had definite stakes. It had a lead character with a horrible temper and no class, but he was always dedicated and caring with those who meant something to him. It made him more human, more relatable. And it had the really funny, silly premise of “What if golf were played by foul-mouthed hooligans with keg-standing, loud-mouthed fans?” It’s kind of brilliant in its simplicity, actually.

Bob Barker obviously has the most popular cameo in the film, but don’t underestimate the surreal hilarity of Carl Weathers as Chubbs — crumbling prosthetic hand very much included. And Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin, complete with obnoxious finger guns, is every bit the smarmy asshole he needs to be. The film is just all-around funny (I still let slip a huge guffaw the first time Gilmore goes up to a criticizing spectator, pulls his shirt over his head and punches him in the fact) built on a very basic, yet sturdy and functional foundation. It’s like the comedy movie equivalent of “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.” Frankly, I wish Sandler would find his way back to it.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Click

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order, by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 309  Days to go: 298

Movie #64: Click

You have to forgive my husband. His job is such that he spends a lot of time completely isolated from normal civilization and when he has down time (which there is a lot of) there’s not much else to do but sleep or read or watch movies. Not all that long ago, before WiFi and streaming Netflix — before smartphones, really — watching movies during his down time at work meant watching DVDs. So he bought a lot of them — most of them blind. He’d hear about a movie but never get a chance to see it, so when it came out on DVD and he saw it in a Wal-Mart discount bin or wherever, he’d buy it unseen. That is how we came to be in possession of Click.

I can kind of understand why my husband would’ve bought it, why he would’ve assumed it would be a safe choice. Adam Sandler used to be funny. I distinctly remember being at least a little bit in love with him on Saturday Night Live, and my best friend and I saw his stand-up live when we were in high school. He killed, and when we met him after the show, he was charming and adorable. Not long after that, he started making movies — and they were funny movies. He became one of the biggest comedy movie stars around, and even when his humor was stupid or sexist or immature, you could still kind of see the fun in it. Click, however, is not a good movie. Click is not a funny movie. Click is a terrible movie.

Click is a jumble of lame, clichéd tropes that are neither funny nor inventive, and everything else is either horribly sexist or incredibly gross or just plain mean-spirited. Ha ha  ha, the dog humps a stuffed animal! Michael (Sandler) lets his kids believe it’s wrestling for now, allowing his son to find out the truth in 10 years (at 17) and his daughter in 30 (at 35). Ha ha ha! Girls should be sheltered and never allowed to know or learn anything about sex! While we’re at it, let’s make sure his daughter wears a sweater for the rest of her natural life because God forbid anyone notice she grows up and develops breasts. Let’s shame her instead! Yeah!

Also, wives are terrible nagging creatures, so why don’t we just fast-forward through all her whiny bullshit, because she couldn’t possibly have anything worthwhile to say, and we might as well fast-forward through sex with her too because she likes all kinds of boring sensual physical contact. It’d be much better just to get right to it. Ha ha ha!

Fart in your boss’s face, hit a little boy in the head with a baseball, and kick a rival in the nuts all because you’re an infantile little jerk. Isn’t that hilarious? People might argue that I’m being too hard on a movie that is intentionally painting its lead as a misguided fool with rotten priorities so he can eventually see the error of his ways and redeem himself, but I disagree. This is not A Christmas Carol. It isn’t showing him the way things were, they way they are, and the way they might be. According to the film, all of these things are actually happening. There’s no way to go back or to change things. It’s only at the end that — ta-da! — he “wakes up” (another entirely predictable development) and is given a second chance by his “angel” Morty (Christopher Walken). Up until that point, by all accounts, what was done was done and he had to accept it. The end. Not only that, but Click is supposed to be a comedy. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to laugh at a movie when its main character is completely and utterly unlikable, its plot was laid out by a chimp with a typewriter, and its jokes suck. It’s like one day Adam Sandler woke up as a miserable schlub who didn’t know how to be funny anymore — and that’s a pretty sad day for high school me. (I would add that Kate Beckinsale is better than this, but looking at her IMDb page, I’m not sure that’s true.)

Seriously, this movie is awful. Don’t watch it.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Benchwarmers

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #27: The Benchwarmers

Ever since I started this project, my husband has been cracking himself up over the reality that I would eventually come to this stupid movie of his, and I would be forced to watch it. Well, the joke’s on him. The Benchwarmers is actually not that bad.

I’m not sure if it’s the surreal feeling of seeing Rob Schneider play it straight (i.e., not some lunatic gross weirdo character), my weird affinity for David Spade and Jon Lovitz, or the sheer joy I feel when Craig Kilborn gets what’s coming to him, but this movie made me laugh quite a bit. It’s goofy, yes. And stupid, yes. And it’s by Adam Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison, so it’s teeming with gross and inappropriate jokes. But it’s funny. And it’s got heart — not unlike something akin to The Bad News Bears.

I’m not sure what at the time would make this so forgettable or make so many assume outright that it was terrible. It couldn’t have been marketed well, I’m guessing, though I doubt that was the only cause. Maybe the world was just burned out on Adam Sandler movies — the mere sight of Rob Schneider (especially considering his previous roles) is enough to make me cringe on most occasions, and I’m sure that’s true for lots of people. Not only that, but David Spade in weird hair is a hard sell on any day, and Jon Heder’s breakout film Napoleon Dynamite was kind of polarizing in that some people really got it and loved it, and everybody else just hated it; there wasn’t a middle ground. (He still seems to have that effect, truth be told.)

I was definitely one of the people who looked at the trailers and posters for this movie and thought, “Ugh.” I wanted nothing to do with it, even after it sat on my shelf for the past eight years. However, I’ve been wrong before and, more importantly, I’m willing to admit it when it happens. This isn’t a movie I’m going to watch over and over again, and it isn’t something I’m going to hold up as an example of how movies should be made or revere in my heart as a treasured favorite, but it made me laugh — out loud, several times — and that’s certainly worth something.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Airheads

The long and the short of it is, I own well over 300 movies on DVD and Blu-ray (I’ll know for sure how many at the end of this project). Until June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #9:  Airheads

I’m no music historian, but in my life, in 1994, right after Kurt Cobain’s suicide (the movie was filmed before and released after), grunge had peaked and rock was coming back into vogue. Not the hair metal of the late ’80s and early ’90s, but rock with a harder, more serious, darker edge. White Zombie was on the scene, Soundgarden had matured into their Superunknown album, Stone Temple Pilots had hit their sweet spot, The Cranberries were about to crush it, The Offspring were kicking ass, and Green Day had just completely flipped the script with Basket Case. (I was 19, so take my music taste with a grain of salt.) Into this thin window of time, Airheads came out in theaters.

It was a time when Brendan Fraser (Chazz) was a heartthrob, thanks in no small part to MTV VJ-phenom Pauly Shore’s film career and most especially a flick called Encino Man. It was a time post-Reservoir Dogs, but well before Steve Buscemi (Rex) was a renowned and celebrated actor. Adam Sandler (Pip) and Chris Farley (Officer Wilson) were still young Saturday Night Live standouts, both a couple years from their breakout blockbuster films. Beavis and Butthead made a voice cameo. MTV News anchor Kurt Loder was contractually obligated to appear as himself in every single movie having to do with music. And Amy Locane (Kayla) was still the poor man’s crazy Christina Applegate.

With all these things in play, the movie itself is sort of inconsequential, really, and that’s a good thing because it’s pretty dumb. Chazz, Rex and Pip make up a band called The Lone Rangers (that it’s the plural of something that’s, by definition, solo, is a running joke that only barely works) who are having no luck getting heard by anyone in a position to make them successful, so they break into the Rebel Radio station and wind up accidentally taking everyone there hostage with toy guns filled with pepper sauce in an attempt to play their demo on the air. Like I said, it doesn’t matter. It kind of intentionally doesn’t matter, in fact, as the so-called killer song in question isn’t even heard until the closing scenes, in the background of the actual action. The movie itself is more of a conglomeration of the pop culture fads in my life that year, and as such is much more meaningful to me as an artifact of that time.

MY MOVIE SHELF: 50 First Dates

 

By rough estimate, I own 339 movies on DVD or Blu-ray, and it’s been a long time since I’ve watched a lot of them. Since I have a bit of time on my hands these days, I decided to take a few weeks to work my way through them all. Then my husband pointed out one movie a day would be nearly a year, so I revised my project. Between now and June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about each and every one of the movies I own, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched (even the most embarrassing, ridiculous titles are subject to scrutiny), however, I will not be discussing any other discs I might own, such as TV series, sporting events, or live concerts as part of this endeavor. I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #4:  50 First Dates

I have probably watched this movie, in whole or in part, several dozen times on some cable channel or another, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the DVD. This occurred to me the moment I started it up, because not only was the menu unfamiliar, but I had completely forgotten the film starts by portraying Sandler’s Henry Roth as some sort of lothario who has countless hot and sexy affairs with anonymous women visiting Hawaii and then gives them some song and dance before they head home, so he never has to even hand out his phone number. Honestly, this is a plot point best forgotten, because while it’s not unheard of for someone to have commitment issues, it’s very hard to accept Adam Sandler as a womanizer — even the movie itself makes several references to his egg-shaped head, and at one point he apologizes to Drew Barrymore’s Lucy for not being better looking. Not only that, but he strikes out with Lucy (a woman who, due to head trauma caused by a car accident over a year ago, loses her short-term memory every morning and can’t remember anything that’s happened since before the accident) at least as many times as he succeeds with her (in the early going, anyway), making it highly suspect that he has any respectable game at all.

But perhaps I’m overthinking this. 50 First Dates is a very silly movie, as 99% of the movies in the Adam Sandler oeuvre are, and that’s okay. Silly movies, by my way of thinking, are just as important as serious ones, especially if they’re done in an entertaining way. And that’s where 50 First Dates succeeds, because Barrymore (who is perhaps at her most beautiful here) and Sandler have a fun and easy chemistry that translates well onscreen and is enjoyable to watch. Plus it has some solidly funny moments (Barrymore actually might land better jokes than Sandler and his regular crew of dudebro actor friends, but if you’re not looking for high art, there are quite a few laughs to be found here). Most of all, though, it has that most intangible of qualities: infinite rewatchability. And that’s why I bought it.