The Wedding Singer
New Line Cinema (1998)
You know that you're getting old when a movie that was meant to be a nostalgic look back at the decade that you grew up in has itself become a piece of nostalgia. The 1998 Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore romantic comedy that was set in the world of 1985 New Jersey is turning 25 years old today.
This is one of those movies that I can't imagine anybody dislikes. It's funny, heartwarming, and absolutely over-the-top with cheesy 80's references almost every scene, song, and line of dialogue. It doesn't have a deep meaning, and it's not going to blow you away with cinematography. It's just good fun.
This is one of my favorite movies of the 1990's and it will always remind me of when I worked at Blowout Video. This was a video rental shop that was inside the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. It was at the front of the store behind the 10 Items Or Less registers next to the portrait studio. I worked there in the final days of VHS before DVDs took over. In addition to renting movies, we had a small selection of Nintendo 64, Playstation and Saturn games.
There were two boxy CRT televisions hanging in each of the top corners on the back wall. These were both hooked up to a VCR that was behind the counter near the cash register. They wanted us to play a new release, and we weren't allowed to play anything that was rated R. Most of the other employees played Disney movies during their shift, but my go-to was The Wedding Singer. It was rated PG-13 so it was technically allowed, but Adam Sandler drops an F-bomb about halfway through the movie, so there was more than one occasion where I had to drop what I was doing to find the remote control so I could hit mute and not get fired.
The Wedding Singer was the first movie that I ever bought on DVD. In fact, I bought it at the same time that I bought my first DVD player - a big honkin' RCA machine that felt like it weighed about 30 pounds. I remember thinking that the audio/video sync seemed a bit off, but I still played it at least once a week. If I was ever in the middle of doing something around the house and wasn't paying especially close attention to the television, this is what was playing. I'll have to dig it out of the binder and watch it again today on its 25th birthday.
The Wedding Singer was the first movie that I ever bought on DVD. In fact, I bought it at the same time that I bought my first DVD player - a big honkin' RCA machine that felt like it weighed about 30 pounds. I remember thinking that the audio/video sync seemed a bit off, but I still played it at least once a week. If I was ever in the middle of doing something around the house and wasn't paying especially close attention to the television, this is what was playing. I'll have to dig it out of the binder and watch it again today on its 25th birthday.
