50 First Dates Synopsis: Henry Roth is a man afraid of commitment up until he meets the beautiful Lucy. They hit it off and Henry thinks he’s finally found the girl of his dreams until he discovers she has short-term memory loss and forgets him the next day.
Veterinarian Henry Roth (Adam Sandler) is a playboy afraid of commitment. But when he meets Lucy (Drew Barrymore) in a local diner, he finds himself drawn to her sweet, off-beat personality. Unfortunately, he soon discovers Lucy suffers from short-term memory loss due to a car accident the year before, and he finds himself having to win her heart all over again, day after day.
While The Wedding Singer remains my favorite rom-com collaboration between Barrymore and Sandler, I realized during my rewatch of 50 First Dates that I enjoy it much more now than I did when I saw it years ago. The weak link in the movie is the first half-hour or so. 50 First Dates opens with a ridiculous montage of various beautiful women lamenting wistfully about their brief but amazing interludes with local Hawaiian stud Henry Roth, which may have worked had the leading man been anyone but Adam Sandler (although perhaps that was a part of the joke).
We get to know more about Henry, who is quite clearly a commitment phobe with little to no respect for women. There is some abundant gross-out humor (yay, projectile vomiting!) and a few juvenile, problematic jokes that fall flat. But once Henry meets Lucy, the movie finally shifts tone, and we get to the story’s heart.
What begins as Henry merely trying to prove that he can get any girl he wants turns into a genuine connection between him and Lucy. Even when he’s told the truth about her condition, he can’t seem to back away despite warnings from her friends and family. It’s amusing in a Groundhog Day-esque way to watch him devise various ways to catch her attention as the days pass. Despite how ridiculous it is, I thoroughly enjoyed the sequence where Drew Barrymore beat Rob Schneider’s silly Ula with a baseball bat.
Sandler and Barrymore share such sweet and quirky chemistry that watching Henry try to win over Lucy for most of 50 First Dates never gets old. You want her to remember their love, to somehow magically cure her memory loss (spoiler: it doesn’t, but that’s also part of the magic of their relationship), and for them to find a happy ever after.
We get a heartbreaking kiss in the rain, and even though Lucy will never be able to remember Henry in the long term, meeting him has changed her own life for good, making her condition a bit easier not only on herself but on her father Marlin (an excellent Blake Clark) and brother Doug (a mildly amusing Sean Astin).
Barrymore has such a shining presence on screen, and she takes what could have been a one-note character. She gives Lucy life, creating a joyful and devastatingly vulnerable character in the face of her tragic circumstances. Henry probably doesn’t deserve her, but Sandler projects the emotional depth needed to make us root for him through the character’s growth and determination to win Lucy’s heart and help her.
50 First Dates has plenty of gross-out moments, and it wouldn’t be a Happy Madison production without the sophomoric humor. Ultimately, it’s a warm, romantic movie that starts slightly bumpy but finishes strong.
Watched: 01/05/2019
Notable Song: Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys
