Barrymore is utterly disarming on the commentary, prone to ready laughter and just as spontaneous with her honest disclosures.
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"50 First Dates" has gotten mixed reviews, and it´s easy to see why. The premise is original, the Hawaiian location is gorgeous, and the stars are cute together. On the other hand, some of the supporting characters seem to have taken one too many surfboards to the head, and you have to suspend logic to enjoy the film. Happily, as with many romantic comedies, that isn´t hard to do.
Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler won the MTV Award for Best On-Screen Team, and they do click together in a quiet and understated way. Barrymore plays Lucy Whitmore, a woman who lost her short-term memory in an automobile accident and lives each day over and over again, like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day." Sandler, meanwhile, is Henry Roth, a marine park veterinarian with a soft spot for a giant walrus and tourist women with vacation mentality. He´s a scammer of the highest order who specializes in one night stands every night of the week, and age, race, class, even gender doesn´t seem to matter. But there´s something about this local girl who makes houses out of her breakfast waffles that he finds irresistible. The trouble is, any headway he makes with her one day is lost overnight. So he has to start all over again. Though Columbia publicity bills it as "the ultimate bachelor" facing "the ultimate challenge," it´s really a sweeter film than that. Director Peter Segal ("My Fellow Americans," "Tommy Boy,") takes the high road this time, avoiding the situational silliness and lowbrow humor that plagued his "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps." Though it also may have been tempting to go the direction of classic madcap romantic comedies, ala Hepburn/Grant or, later, Streisand/O´Neal, Segal seems to have had the stars´ first film pairing in mind. "The Wedding Singer" was more of a Sandler vehicle than "50 First Dates," but Barrymore´s naturally quiet flirtatiousness sets the tone in both, and with Sandler reacting to her, his potentially manic comedic style is kept in check. He´s even more of a normal, nice guy this time around. What´s not to like about these two together?
Well, George Wing´s script, for one thing. It doesn´t move the premise beyond gimmickry to where it can become an arena for character development. Maybe that´s because Wing spends so much of the time trying to explain the actions of the people in Lucy´s life. Okay, she has a trauma injury that knocked out her short-term memory, but why in the world would her father (Blake Clark) and brother (Sean Astin) reenact the last day she remembers, complete with newspapers printed up and family showings of the same movie every night? And why would the people at the diner where she ate breakfast that pre-fateful day play along with the ruse? Lucy has a doctor (Dan Akroyd), so why is it up to Henry to shake her out of her memory loss by introducing elements into her life that show time has passed and that every day isn´t really Sunday, October 13th? And why wouldn´t it occur to her family to try such mild shock therapy? These are some pretty big questions, but Sandler and Barrymore are actually so good in their roles that you can almost accept the characters´ irrational behavior as "Northern Exposure" erratic, and nothing more. As the people in Lucy´s life circle the Spam wagons to protect her from this new man in her life, you can almost forgive any lack of logic in their actions.
But a few of those minor characters are so over-the-top that it´s annoying. Rob Schneider plays a Cheech & Chong clone named Ula who supposedly trains the animals at the marine attraction by feeding them hash brownies. And Henry´s assistant Alexa (Lusia Strus) is as much of a Teutonic caricature as Dr. Evil´s right-hand woman in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery." On the flip side, Clark and Astin are wholly believable and engaging as the concerned father and brother, and diner denizens Sue (Amy Hill) and the cook Henry calls Tattoo Face (Pomaika´i Brown) add enough local color to make a mural.
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[release]12113[/release]