50 First Dates (Blu-ray)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler had great chemistry in "The Wedding Singer," and managed to find it again in "50 First Dates." Though the set-up in this light romantic comedy is a bit strained, once you get into the main interaction with the two stars you get both the laughs and the emotion that you hope for in a film like this.

Barrymore and 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 because she's a headcase. Literally. An accident has destroyed her short-term memory, so he has to meet her and win her over day after day.

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 for the most part, avoiding the situational silliness and lowbrow humor that plagued his "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps." Sure, there's a gross-out barf joke, and the minor characters are so silly that you think they've taken one too many surfboards to the head. But Barrymore's naturally quiet flirtatiousness sets the tone, and it's perfect for Sandler to react to. He's a basically normal guy this time around, with a nice guy streak that makes you wonder how he could have been such a cad with all those tourist women.

There are flaws, certainly. For one thing, George Wing's script 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 brace yourself for some over-the-top minor characters. 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 Hukilau Cafe denizens Sue (Amy Hill) and a cook Henry calls Tattoo Face (Pomaika´i Brown) add enough local color to make for quite a mural.