(Gimme a) Shotgun Wedding

About half a year ago, a friend loaned me her DVD of The Wedding Singer. She basically forced me to borrow it, bringing it to my house and leaving it there. I made her no promises that I would ever watch it. I told her: I do not like Adam Sandler. I sometimes don't even like him when he's not being "Adam Sandler"; I certainly wasn't going to like him in a movie like this, where he most certainly was being "Adam Sandler."

But then the apocalypse happened. Specifically, the "apocalyPS3" happened, that fateful March 1 where nearly every "fat" (older) Playstation 3 on the planet thought it was a leap year when it wasn't, rendering the consoles basically incapable of doing almost anything for a 24-hour period.

On that night, I'd already watched everything I had from Netflix and was sending it back. I'd been thinking about maybe watching a movie using their instant service on PS3 -- but that suddenly wasn't working. So my eyes fell upon that Wedding Singer DVD, sitting there on my counter in exactly the spot it had been for months. Only a calamity of this magnitude could make me watch it.

No surprises... I thought it was awful. Adam Sandler's one-note schtick was on full display in this piece of standard romantic comedy fare. You know, that only way he can deliver a "joke," by first talking really softly and then suddenly GETTING VERY LOUD! Because shouting at you will trick you into thinking he's funny. He does it in almost every scene of the movie. In fact, there's a whole song about halfway through that's built on the gimmick -- quiet in the verses, shouty in the chorus. Unfunny throughout.

I've heard it said that a redeeming quality of this movie is that its set in the 1980s and has a great soundtrack of 80s music. That may be true, but I don't need to sit through 90 minutes of crap for the music. It's not like you even get to actually listen to more than a few pieces of it scattered in the background. In fact, some of it you have to suffer through in karaoke fashion as rendered by Sandler. If I want to listen to 1980s music, I have an iPod.

No, the only truly redeeming quality of this movie is Drew Barrymore, who gives a good performance this movie is not worthy to contain. She works her ass off to make a sympathetic character and to make you believe anyone could fall in love with Adam Sandler. And she does it all working within the binds of awful, cliched writing. That it succeeds on any level is a major miracle.

Otherwise, the movie is just beyond awful -- a D- waste of time at best.