Basically, Henry has to make Lucy fall in love with him every single day, which shows just how far a man will go for love. The film shows what happens when a man named Henry (Sandler) falls in love with a woman named Lucy (Barrymore) who has amnesia, and can’t remember anything the following day. In the popular 2004 movie, “50 First Dates,” with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, we see an attempt at showcasing disability as a real social issue and also connecting it with comedy and romance to make it entertaining and relatable. Area theaters.Īdam Sandler woos Drew Barrymore - again and again - in the charming film "50 First Dates.Disability Comedies: Hilariously funny or seriously problematic? Which, when you think about it, is not a bad lesson to learn, even if it comes courtesy of an Adam Sandler film.ĥ0 FIRST DATES (PG-13, 96 minutes) - Contains discussion of sexual matters, some obscenity, drug use, slapstick violence and walrus vomit. If he wants any kind of future with her, he must resign himself to the fact that love, like antiperspirant, is something you have to reapply each day. Henry already is a pretty decent human being, and he's never going to wake up to find that there's a cure for Lucy's condition.
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Unlike the earlier movie, "50 First Dates" is not about some slick operator stuck in a magical time warp who has to learn how to be a decent human being before he can find love. It's a bit like "Groundhog Day" in that Henry quickly discovers that he can take advantage of the information he gleans on each "date" (such as the fact that she loves lilies and that the smell of fish on his hands reminds her of her fisherman father) to accelerate the seduction process on the next one.īut that's where the similarities end. Rather than run, though, Henry determines that he will try - and, Lord, how he tries - to re-woo her every day. Her doting family (Blake Clark as her patient father and a hilarious Sean Astin as her lisping, steroid-addicted brother) go through an elaborate daily charade to keep her thinking that, putting out a fake newspaper on the stoop each morning and sitting through a videotape of "The Sixth Sense" each night before bed. In short order, Henry finds out that Lucy, as the result of a car accident a year earlier, can't remember anything from one day to the next. And who wouldn't? Barrymore turns on all her daffy charisma here, which, even at half-wattage, is enough to make a man go all giggly (just ask David Letterman). That is, until he meets Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore) and falls - hard - for her. Commitment-shy - thanks to a broken heart suffered in college, a bit of back story meant to make him look less like a cad than a victim - he's an island Lothario in cargo shorts and flip-flops, seducing and dumping one tourist after another. Of course, Henry himself is no saint, at least not when we first meet him.
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How can there not be in a movie with Rob Schneider, who, as Henry's Hawaiian best friend, Ula, is all long-haired, over-sexed, pot-smoking, plumber-cracked id? He's everything Henry's kind, gentlemanly suitor is not: an irresponsible, lust-wracked imp. Sure, there's plenty of dumb, vulgar humor. You might call "50 First Dates" a chick flick for guys, with a pH balance in perfect equilibrium between the crass and the sweet. Henry's a little bit like "Punch Drunk Love's" love-struck Barry Egan - minus that character's poor impulse control.
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Thankfully, he's more "Wedding Singer" than "Waterboy" here, and his portrayal of Hawaiian marine theme-park veterinarian Henry Roth, softened by another dose of the chemistry he and Barrymore enjoyed in "Singer," seems closer to the actor's endearingly sincere schlemiel center. Mind you, I'm no great fan of Sandler's oeuvre. IN "50 FIRST Dates," a sneakily charming romantic comedy about a man courting a brain-damaged woman unable to retain more than 24 hours' worth of short-term memory, Adam Sandler wakes up every morning having to make Drew Barrymore fall in love with him over and over and over again.