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50 First Dates

Review by: Alysa Salzberg
AlysaSalzberg@TheCinemaSource.com

Adam Sandler does not want you to write him off!

Sandler's the kind of guy whose humor and creative vision registers in a very hit-or-miss kind of way with audiences. Either you love him and think he's the funniest guy on the planet, or else you're convinced he's the immature spawn of a very unfunny Satan (which, appropriately enough, he played in 2000's unjustly underrated Little Nicky).

Lately, it seems like the comedian's taken this polarity to heart, and decided he wants us to know he's more versatile than most of us assume. Last year, he stunned countless critics and film buffs by playing the starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love. That got Adam some indie street cred…which fell a bit, when you consider that his next projects were Mr. Deeds and the animated stinker Eight Crazy Nights.

So what's he doing in 50 First Dates? At first, it would seem, the same old Sandler schtick made popular (and profitable) in flicks like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. The schtick goes like this: Adam plays a slightly goofy "regular guy" who goes up against some challenge or another, bolstered by a bevy of odd friends and enemies (a former golf pro whose hand was eaten by an alligator, druggie friends, a talking bulldog, etc.). When you start watching 50 First Dates, you feel immediately that you're back in Sandler territory, with barfing animals, mannish women, and multiple references to male anatomy all in the first 10 minutes.

But then, things change. So, in fact, do Sandler's character Henry Roth's womanizing ways, when he meets and falls madly in love with Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore), a woman who, it turns out, has lost her ability to make new memories. Lucy wakes up every morning thinking it's the last day she can remember, and her father (Blake Clark) and brother (Sean Astin, LOTR's own Sam, in an admirably hysterical turn as a lisping, 'roid chugging, mesh T-shirt wearing dude – talk about range!) continue the illusion, playing through the same day, day in, day out, to preserve Lucy's sanity and happiness. This absurd concept could have been used for jokes and nothing more, but writer George Wing, director Peter Segal, and Barrymore, Sandler, and the rest of the cast portray it in such a light that Lucy's life seems like a fairytale or something out of a magical realist or absurdist book (one of the reasons it's so appropriate that Lucy's forever reading and re-reading Tom Robbins' Still Life with Woodpecker).

Skeptical as you might be about Sandler, or anyone else involved in this project, I almost guarantee that 50 First Dates will win you over. To my complete surprise, in fact, I even found myself crying once or twice. Unlike most romantic comedies (or Sandler comedies, for that matter), ...