An utter train wreck of a movie?
That?s what happened to me the other night when I rented 50 First Dates.
I?d seen the preview in the theater and after a hectic day on Sunday, decided that it had just about the right heft for my attention span.
Boyoboy, was I wrong.
Briefly, it?s about Henry Roth, a womanizing aquarium vet in Hawaii, who spends his off-hours romancing (I use the term loosely) female tourists anxious to get laid in Hawaii. He?s commitment-phobic, until he meets sweet Lucy Whitmore at a breakfast joint and is drawn to her. He learns from one of her squadron of protective friends and family that as the result of an automobile accident a year earlier, she has lost her short-term memory, which is wiped clean every night so she arises in the morning with no memory of anything after the accident. The plot of the movie revolves around his attempts to make her fall in love with him all over again every day, since she never remembers having seen him before.
It?s a provocative idea; can you have a viable life if you have no short-term memory? What are the possibilities of a relationship? How deep does a relationship have to be to be permanent, serious, and committed? How can that be possible if one partner doesn?t remember the other from one day to the next? What, indeed, do either of these people love about each other?
Unfortunately, this movie makes no attempt to address any of these issues. Yes, this is billed as a comedy, but it could have been handled so much more deeply and still provided amusement. In fact, I prefer to believe that the possibilities of gentle, real humor inherent in this situation could have been developed much more successfully had they not been suffocated under a thick, nasty slather of unrelenting walrus-penis jokes and other assorted vulgarities.
So does 50 First Dates have anything at all to recommend it? Yes, actually, it does. Adam Sandler as Henry and Drew Barrymore as Lucy are sweet and generate some warmth in their scenes together. Henry is such a completely unbelievable schmuck as the movie opens; his character doesn?t have a single reality-based nuance. But he sheds that as he realizes what he?s getting into, and it’s actually heart-warming to see that he evidently never even considers running away from this difficult situation.
He puts his whole heart into winning Lucy - all over again, every day - and exhibits infinite patience as she repeats the same corny sentiments day after day after day. I have no idea what he thinks his life with her would be like - he?s not that introspective - but after he realizes that he?s fallen in love with her, it apparently never occurs to him to leave her and revert to his former unpleasant persona. Unbelievable, given the excesses of that persona? Yes, but nice anyway.
Drew Barrymore was quite believable as Lucy, given that I don?t know anything about short-term memory loss or how it really affects people. She?s sweet to the point of saccharine - her one question after being told that her condition was caused by an accident in which her father collided with a cow while driving is, ?What happened to the cow?? - but that quality is necessary to make Henry?s relentless pursuit of her believable.
Beyond those two elements, though, and with one small further exception, the rest of the movie is a disaster. Here?s what I hated about it:
? There?s an exceedingly unpleasant sub-plot involving Henry?s assistant, the sexually indeterminate Alexa (Lusia Strus, ) she of the heavy Russian accent, crown of braids, and voracious and freely expressed appetite for sex with members of either gender.
? There?s also Ula (Rob Schnieder, ) Henry?s best friend, for reasons unknown, who is always accompanied by his five kids. Ula is the sexually obsessed sidekick who never misses an opportunity to vulgarize the action; during a wedding video, in which he is the officiant (what were they thinking???) he says, ?Do you, Henry, promise to love Lucy forever, even when she gets fat and ugly and the idea of sex with her nauseates you?? - or words to that effect. At which his wife, sitting in the front row with the aforementioned kids, flips him the finger. At a wedding. Ula talks about nothing but sex, but seems to have no other function in the movie; nothing he does advances the plot in even the smallest way. He?s entirely peripheral and if he weren?t there, not only would he not be missed, but the movie would be vastly improved. Ugh.
? And then there are his five kids. There?s no explanation for the fact that they are all the same age, about five or six, are always with him, speak and act in predictable unison, and usually show more wit and wisdom than their old man. Double-ugh.
? Lucy?s brother, Doug (Sean Astin, ) is a muscle-bound layabout with a heavy lisp and no brains, whose primary function in the movie is to serve as the buts of mercilessly repeated jokes about steroid use among body-builders. He can also wiggle his pectorals.) He wears mesh tank-tops, which is reason enough for me to dislike him. His only redeeming feature is that he truly loves his sister and has devoted himself to helping their father protect her by maintaining the charade that the accident never happened. But he is entirely one-dimensional, more so than anyone else in this wretched mess of a movie.
? Dan Ayckroyd appears as Lucy’s doctor, yet another one-dimensional character. The best example of his lack of believability is that on the day she learns about the accident and its effect on her, the whole family trots off to see the Doc, who apparently has holes in his schedule big enough for them to spend the afternoon with him, looking at CAT scans and visiting a facility for people with short-term memory loss. Now that’s unbelievable!
? There are two intensely unpleasant peripheral characters, one an Asian man who eats breakfast at the same café where Henry and Lucy meet and who spends his few moments on screen swearing and being obnoxious. And there?s a young woman, a tax attorney on her last night in Hawaii, who demands, when Henry declines her invitation to bed her, that he refer her to someone who will accept it.
? There?s also one unfortunate character, ’’10-Second Tom, ? a victim of short-term memory loss so severe that his ability to remember doesn?t even last ten seconds. The writers of this abortion of a movie saw fit to make him a caricature; he shows up twice, each time as the butst of someone else?s punchline.
? Even the walrus, who seems to be Henry?s main charge at the aquarium, is overdone. This walrus was trained to a fare-thee-well, and kisses, barks, waves, and nods his head on command. He also barfs copiously all over the unfortunate Alexa, one of the more unpleasant, but predictable, scenes I?ve ever seen. His main function seems to be as the subject of interminably repeated jokes about the size of walrus penii. Enough, already. There is nothing even slightly walrusy about this walrus.
This is one of the more juvenile, vulgar, and mean-spirited movies it has ever been my misfortune to see. At every opportunity, the writers and director chose to appeal to the basest and raunchiest frat-boy sensibilities in their audience. (Marcy Kitty)
By the way, someone here on MS has four fake accounts and claims she is me, when
she in fact is not, in fact she has been making death threats against user who
expose as a psychotic rambling lunatic, her name is WillyNilly.