Movies of 1998 Bracket Game: You’ve Got Mail Vs. The Wedding Singer

https://lebeauleblog.com/2018/01/21/movies-of-1998-bracket-game-youve-got-mail-vs-the-wedding-singer/

To begin the lower half of our 1998 bracket we’re representing the rom-com cinematic trend with two pretty traditional examples of the genre, but from slightly different generations. I would argue that while a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie is pretty appealing overall, it is most appealing to younger baby boomers and that including Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore aims your movie more toward younger members of Generation X. I have a mild appreciation for both of these movies, so maybe that says something about where I sit on this spectrum? Let’s take a look at both You’ve Got Mail and The Wedding Singer.

But first, let’s take a look-see at the results of yesterday’s animation smack down. This time we had a relatively close contest, with Disney’s tale of a heroic girl Mulan winning with 56% of the vote. Milan and her dragon Mushu will face off against Deep Impact in the second round.

You’ve Got Mail was the third romantic comedy to pair Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, with Sleepless In Seattle helping to boost both of their careers five years earlier while LeBlog favorite Joe vs the Volcano mysteriously did nothing for them. The source material for the 1998 rom-com has a pretty rich history of its own, tracing back to a 1937 Hungarian stage play called “Parfumerie.” That story was later adapted for the screen in 1940 by Ernst Lubitsch (Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be, Heaven Can Wait) into The Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart. That film was then adapted into a movie musical starring Judy Garland called The Good Old Summertime in 1949. That all happened relatively quickly, but then fourteen years later the same story was adapted into a completely separate stage musical called She Loves Me (a show I took a small role in once in 1995). Each of these previous versions of the story revolved around a man and woman who knew one another in real life but were unaware that they were secret pen pals. Nora and Delia Ephron saw the opportunity to update this conceit with what was then a relatively new internet culture on which people could meet, but still conceal their identities. This led to one of the bigger criticisms of the movie in charges of product placement due to its characters’ repeated use of the America On Line (AOL) email service with the logo and sound included.

While You’ve Got Mail was a bit of a yuppie fantasy set in the Upper West Side in New York City, the Adam Sandler vehicle The Wedding Singer was decidedly more relatable to most younger audiences, set in middle class suburbs and featuring waitresses and wedding singers (duh). Sandler, like it or not, was one of the biggest movie stars in the United States at the time, and it could easily be argued that his football comedy The Waterboy is more deserving of a place on this bracket. after all, that movie was number five for the year at the box office, while The Wedding Singer was just twenty-fourth, behind such forgotten fare as Everest and Stepmom. It comes down to two things, though. Firstly, The Wedding Singer pairs better with You’ve Got Mail as a romantic comedy, and secondly I just like it a lot more. This way we get to have Adam Sandler represented with a movie that is actually kind of sweet. Of course the trailer below makes sure to include all of the most obnoxious bits in the movie. As a film that is largely based on nostalgia, inclusion of The Wedding Singer is also kind of meta, since this bracket is also very much about nostalgia. For anybody near my own age, the evocation of leg warmers and Culture Club and wine coolers does hit a sort of trashy sweet spot. It also appears to some degree that The Wedding Singer has been better remembered than many of Sandler’s other films, inspiring a hit soundtrack and a stage musical adaptation in 2006.