The Wedding Singer - DVDfever.co.uk

The Wedding Singerhas been Robbie Hart’s (Adam Sandler) job ever since his rockstar-wannabe days ended up just that – wannabe. The rest of his life hasn’tbeen the greatest success either since he lives in his sister’s house with herhusband and their children, but all is set to change when, after countlessperformances at other people’s weddings, it’s his turn. However, after sixyears of dating, his fiancee Linda doesn’t show up and, during the same timeperiod, he begins to fall for a waitress named Julia (Drew Barrymore).

The problem is that she’s set to marry someone else – a MiamiVice-obsessed wealthy womaniser named Glenn (Matthew Glave), whonever misses an episode, drives around a la Sonny Crockett but still can’tkeep his eyes – and hands – off other girls even just days before their wedding.In the planning for their wedding, he wants a big trip to Las Vegas, but she’sa simple girl who prefers a family affair in her home town.

What follows is a very obvious love story with no surprises, in which the twoprincipal leads dance around each other, taking the knocks from other peoplein their careers and/or love-life until they eventually get it together.

No-one onscreen really pushes the boat out though. Adam Sandler now gets paidin the region of £20 million per film after a series of hit comediesincluding the forthcoming Big Daddy, but aside from a few oneliners, heplays this role as a poor man’s David Schwimmer (Friends). Drew Barrymoreis amiable enough as the waitress dreaming of a happy future, but like Sandler,the script doesn’t give them enough to chew on and the film meanders towards apredictable end.

The rest of the cast is made up with The Brady Bunch Movie‘sChristine Taylor as Julia’s best friend Holly, Angela Featherstoneas Robbie’s now-ex, Linda, Alexis Arquette from Robbie’s backing band whodoes nothing but Boy George impressions and only knows one Culture Club songand finally Steve Buscemi in a cameo at the start as the best man at thefirst wedding, who disappears as soon as he’s arrived, only to turn up againbriefly later on. Cameos also come from Jon Lovitz as a lacklustreclub singer not doing much justice to the track “Ladies Night” andBilly Idol as himself, although the make-up has been heavily applied tomake him look fourteen years younger and it doesn’t quite work…

The picture quality is mostly fine, but there is blocking mainly evident inareas with large amounts of the same colour. Inbetween camera cuts this alsocauses the blocking to occasioanlly have a mini-fit as the image completelychanges. The root cause of this appears to be where stationary pixels onscreenare next to moving ones – the method used for compressing the data on DVDs -but it doesn’t work that well here. However, these problems won’t beparticularly noticeable to most people when sat on the sofa at the usual viewingdistance from the TV.

I wasn’t able to determine the average bitrate as the information is not onthis release. The film is presented in its original widescreen ratio of 1.85:1,not the slightly less-wide 16:9 as quoted on the back cover and is anamorphic,thus giving an extra 33% of resolution for those with widescreen televisions.Thankfully though, the anamorphic problem of giving people ‘fat faces’, as seeninWag The DogandBoogie Nightshas now been cured and the geometry is correct.

The sound quality is very good but never gets chance to give your speakers aworkout as the average comedy is hardly an explosion fest. However, we haveto be thankful that this is one of the few EiV titles to get a Dolby Digital5.1 soundtrack and the music is very good with classic tunes fromBilly Idol (White Wedding),Nena (99 Luftballons),Musical Youth (Pass the Dutchie),The Cure (Boys Don’t Cry),The Thompson Twins (Hold Me Now),Lionel Ritchie (All Night Long),Kajagoogoo (Too Shy),Hall & Oates (You Make My Dreams),Elvis Costello (Everyday I Write the Book),The Police (Every Little Thing She Does is Magic),New Order (Blue Monday),David Bowie (China Girl),Huey Lewis and the News (Do You Believe In Love),Flying Lizards (Money (That’s What I Want)),Bruce Springsteen (Hungry Heart),The Smiths (How Soon is Now)and a cover of The Buggles‘ Video Killed The Radio Star byThe Presidents of the United States of America. In fact the firstsoundtrack album sold so well that a second was issued to fit the rest of thesongs on.

Extras : Chapters and Trailer :24 chapters cover the 97-minute film which covers the major scenes of the filmand the scene-selection menu looks very good. The original theatrical traileris also included.

Don’t go looking for a correct copy of the chapter list inside the DVD casingthough as there’s a completely unrelated one in there. In fact, after carefulstudy it looks like a 22-track mixture of scenes from this film andWag The Dog,with more taken from the latter, although neither films have exactly 22 tracksto choose from and the chapter titles for WTD differ to those listed herebut those who have seen it will still make sense of “Jim Belushi, Albanian”and “The Digital Kitten”.

Languages & Subtitles :

The language and subtitles are in English only, the former coming in DolbyDigital 5.1. I found to select the subtitles if you’re not watching the filmfrom the beginning, you have no choice but to do this and find your placeagain since putting the DVD in and selecting your favourite scene will resultin a text-less picture.

Biographies and Filmograpies :Brief information is given for the three principal leads, Adam Sandler,Drew Barrymore and Christine Taylor.

And that’s it for the extras. It’s worth noting that the American releasecomes complete with Karaoke versions of five songs from the soundtrack:Hold Me Now, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me ?, Every Little Thing She Does IsMagic, Rappers Delight and White Wedding, an 80’s music trivia gameand the Wedding album.

Menu :

The menu system has sound and animation, the music coming from the cover ofDead Or Alive‘s You Spin Me Round (Like a Record). The main menufeatures quick-cut clips from the film but they appear to ‘stutter’ whenpresented onscreen. The scene-selection menu is well done with rotatingchapter titles.

On inserting the disc, you see the copyright info, the Entertainment In Videologo and finally the New Line Cinema logo before the menu appears.Clicking on “Play Movie” brings up the New Line Cinema logo again before thefilm starts.

For a film this hyped – see all the press quotes on the back – it’sdisappointing to find that it has nothing more to offer than any other lovestory that’s gone by, apart from a few one-liners and classic songs from the80’s. In fact, at times it teeters on the boring side, mainly due to the factthat there is zero romantic chemistry between the two leads.

There must be a market for it though as my significant other thought it wasbrilliant and has watched it again since. If you fall into the same categoryand aren’t too bothered about extras then it’s worth a look, but I’d recommendyou rent it first if you can to see if it’s the sort of film you’d want to watchmore than once.FILM : *PICTURE QUALITY : ****SOUND QUALITY: ****EXTRAS: **——————————-OVERALL: ***

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Dom Robinson

Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.

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