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: A League of Their Own

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: 209  Days to go: 210

Movie #168:  A League of Their Own

Hey, does anybody know if there’s any crying in baseball? No one’s ever said.

A League of Their Own, in case you were born yesterday or have lived in a cave the past twenty-two years, is the tale of Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) remembering the year she played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She has a competitive relationship with her kid sister Kit (Lori Petty), takes on a leadership role within her team, the Rockford Peaches, builds a grudging respect and collaboration with their drunken manager, Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), and is seen as the best, most important and most dynamic player in the league.

I love stories about women and about their relationships, and this is a really well-told story. It’s the story of a women’s professional baseball league that is officially titled with “Girls” in the name and how it’s simultaneously freeing and objectifying. It’s about women lifting each other up and succeeding together. Some of these women have been put down all their lives, some of them have never learned to read, some are venturing out of their tiny little small-town existences for the first time, some are their families’ breadwinners, and all are finding camaraderie, companionship and a world of opportunity they never knew was there before. It’s such a refreshing change from lots of stories about women, that almost always involve a steep rivalry. Here the only real relationship rivalry is between Dottie and Kit (almost entirely on Kit’s side, since Dottie doesn’t know what Kit’s problem is half the time), and they’re sisters, so there’s more love than animosity, and always will be. If you focus on just the conflicts, you miss the part where Kit makes a plea to Dottie for her very well-being at the beginning of the film, begging for the chance to leave their hometown and to be someone, and Dottie gives it to her. You’d miss how supportive she is, how much she praises her. You’d miss how they come together at the end, mingling happy and sad over the result of the World Series, but with a love for each other that binds them together stronger than time or distance or even baseball can break. You’d also miss how they stick together in Fort Collins, Colorado, as Marla (Megan Cavanagh) is trying out for the scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz), and if you miss anything to do with the scout, you’ve done yourself a grievous wrong.

Ernie Capadino is the most perfect perfect perfect character in this film. He’s brash and cold and cuts to the chase, and literally almost every single line of his is hilarious. Whether he’s sarcastically cutting down the “milk maids,” as he calls them, and their naiveté, or offering to drum up a pistol for a man whose job is so boring Ernie would kill himself if he had it, or simply going home to “give the wife a little pickle tickle,” he’s fantastic. But the absolute best moment is when Marla lifts her head to show her face to him at, let’s say, not the most advantageous angle. He makes a face that is priceless in its shock and disgust, and it is my favorite face of all time.

There are parts of the film that feel clunky to me — the framing in the present, the silly earworm song about the league (even though it was the real song of the league, it’s still so oddly wedged into the film), and the casting of Madonna as a woman who liked to show off her bosoms named “All the Way” Mae Mordabito, to name a few. But so much of it is strong and moving (and funny), that the ill-fitting aspects are easily overlooked. Tom Hanks’s performance grows on me every time I watch it, always giving me a slightly greater glimpse at all the nuance he put into this role that initially struck me as just bluster. Yes, hitting Stillwell Angel (Justin Scheller) in the head with a glove is a perfect moment, but so is the time he wrestles away the telegram and solemnly delivers it to the player whose husband has just died in the war. (If you do not bawl your eyes out in that moment, even when you know it is coming, you’ve got a stronger constitution than I.)

One of the things that has always struck me about A League of Their Own, though, is the opening scene. A grandmother is preparing to go on a trip across the country to the induction of women (and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) into the Baseball Hall of Fame. She’s reluctant, but her daughter is insistent and as they are leaving, the woman’s two grandsons are playing basketball. To the older, she offers a reminder that his younger brother is still smaller, no matter what he does, so give him a chance to shoot. To the younger, she says, “Kill him.” I’ve thought about this so many times, how this woman’s relationship with her little sister growing up (because we will soon find that this is an older Dottie Hinson, played by Lynn Cartwright in these opening and closing scenes) frames how she treats and encourages her grandchildren. It’s something we all do to a certain extent, of course. Our experiences inform our perceptions. But I find it infinitely interesting all the same.

It’s as if Dottie feels regret toward her relationship with Kit, as if it’s somehow Dottie’s responsibility that Kit feels inferior to her. And yet, being that older, protective sibling, she’s going to feel responsible for her younger sister. It’s fascinating how cyclical these patterns are, and I honestly can’t tell you if I think Dottie is justified or not in her regret (not that anyone has to justify regret, but you know what I mean — does she have a reason, something she did, etc.). I might be the only person to focus in on that, but I come across it a lot — in how my experiences have shaped by behaviors, how my kids are shaped by their experiences, and how much of an excuse that gives us, if any, for the way we act going forward. It’s a puzzle.

I also like the funny parts, I’m not a monster. I like the decorum classes. I agree that “avoid the clap” is good advice. I like the idea of calling someone Betty Spaghetti, and if I knew anyone whose name rhymed with spaghetti, I’d be on it. I like Rosie O’Donnell as Doris, but I love her dad and her admirers just a little bit more. I love “singing to Nelson.” I love thanking God for “that waitress in South Bend.” I’m a fan of an uncomfortably long pee joke. I like Ann Cusack learning to read “grabbed her milky white breasts,” because, after all, it only matters that she’s reading. I like Garry Marshall as fictionalized candy pioneer and league owner Walter Harvey, who keeps his socializing short and sweet. I like David Strathairn as Ira Lowenstein, who, until Jimmy scratched his balls for an hour in the 5th inning, didn’t know if he was drunk or dead. I like dirt in the skirt and “accidentally” hitting jerks in the stands with baseballs. I even like seeing Tea Leoni playing for Racine. And heaven knows I love all those really well-done baseball montages.

However, with only four teams in the entire league? There are way too many games in a baseball season. I will die on this hill.

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.