The Wedding Singer Movie: Why It's Not Out Of Character For Robbie To Be Depressed?

(Warning for possible spoilers for The Wedding Singer (#ad) 1998 American romantic comedy film, which is about this guy who has his heart broken, but, in the end, he finds what he’s looking for to make him happy)

Also known as, "How should a depressed character act?"

Who is The Wedding Singer?

When this film introduces us to Robbie Hart (played by Adam Sandler), the wedding singer, we can immediately see what kind of person he is. He’s a nice and cheery guy.

He makes people laugh and be happy, bringing joy to the people he sings for and talks to especially at the weddings that he attends.

In the very first wedding scene that we saw, Robbie was able to make sure the newlyweds didn’t end up fighting after the groom’s best man said inappropriate things.

He even managed to cheer up a sad Julia Sullivan (played by Drew Barrymore), the main female character, who worked as a waitress at said wedding.

How The Wedding Singer becomes depressed?

Things change when Robbie Hart is stood up at the altar and left by his fiancée, Linda (played by Angela Featherstone). He becomes very sad and depressed, which is completely understandable considering what happened to him.

Robbie’s actions reflect how depressed he really is

It’s interesting to note the striking differences at the beginning of the film before Robbie’s wedding and the part of the movie after the wedding scene where Linda doesn’t show up.

It’s like Robbie’s character and personality undergoes a complete makeover with how different he acts now. He sulks and mopes and lies around in bed all day, refusing to go to work for quite a while.

Then, when he does go to work, he manages to annoy and frustrate the people that he sings for, practically ruining the wedding reception of a couple. He sings songs that reflect how sad and depressed and miserable he feels (like saying that "love stinks").

At first glance, some might get the impression that this is out of character (OOC) for him, that he’s not acting like himself at all and that’s not how he should be acting.

While it is true that he isn’t acting like how he usually does, in this case, it’s not a sign of The Wedding Singer being OOC. It’s because of what he has experienced and what had happened to him that made him act this way.

When he started recovering and trying to move on from the incident in question, Robbie also started acting like his usual self again.


*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by CoDLia (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to symbolize the wedding singer being depressed because of what happened to him
- Second pic is from Amazon.com; link shown above
- YouTube video features a short scene from The Wedding Singer