50 FIRST DATES
Tagline: Imagine having to win over the girl of your dreams... every friggin' day.
Pizza: Lenzini's
IN 50 FIRST DATES,
DREW BARRYMORE DOESN'T KNOW
SANDLER FROM ADAM
DREW BARRYMORE DOESN'T KNOW
SANDLER FROM ADAM
I realize it. I really do. It hit me the moment I saw the poster for 2008's YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, where he was holding a hairdryer while doing a split; Adam Sandler movies have their place in the world, but it's not a world I live in. I don't begrudge him at all. I'm glad he makes A) people laugh and B) wheelbarrows filled with $10,000 bills. More power to you, Adam.
So now you won't be surprised when I say that I think 50 FIRST DATES (2004) is pure shit. I don't think I'm alone on this one. From the Village Voice: "The barf stream of gay jokes, pussy jokes, fat wife jokes, more gay jokes, and walrus penis jokes ends up making you pine for Lucy's (Drew Barrymore) gift of forgetting."
I imagine the pitch went like this:
"A womanizing asshole who can't commit meets a girl he's ready to stay with for more than one night - BUT - she has a serious brain affliction that affects her short term memory. Every day, she lives October 13th as if it's the first time. Anyway, the next day, when the asshole meets the brain-damaged girl for their date, she doesn't remember him. So...and I think you see what I'm about to say...each day, the asshole must wow her with new approaches that will be really wacky and extremely funny. And if you don't believe me, the script will have both a farting walrus and Rob Schneider." (Mr. Stew D. O'Suit: "Sold!!!")
Or the elevator pitch: Asshole meets brain-damaged Girl meets GROUNDHOG DAY.
Sandler plays Henry Roth, a veterinarian at a Sea World-y place in Hawaii (okay, maybe the pitch was Sandler’s: "Get me five weeks in Hawaii with Drew Barrymore.") He enjoys bedding down an endless waterfall stream of tourists who leave the island afterwards, so he never has to commit. And why won't he commit? Two reasons. 1- Because his college girlfriend cheated on him (which makes him a wimp), and 2 - Because he wants to go to Alaska to study walruses, and if he has a steady girlfriend, he can't (which makes no sense on more than a few levels). But okay, this is only an Adam Sandler movie. I have to keep repeating that to myself.
Henry seems content being who he is until he meets art teacher Lucy (Barrymore, showing her range as a cute bubbly girl). Why, you ask, after plowing through all those one night stands does he suddenly get smitten with Lucy? Well, that is something I don't know the answer to. I don't think anyone does, including Henry himself; when Lucy's dad (Blake Clark) asks him "What do you get out of this?," Henry says, "I don't know." And if Henry doesn't know, then we sure don't. It's only an Adam Sandler movie...it's only an Adam Sandler movie...
It's a fine meet-too-cute; Lucy is building a house she made from her waffles, and charmer Henry assists by adding a toothpick to act as a hinge in her waffle door...and...they're off! They make a date for the next day, but when he shows up, not only doesn't she recognize him, but she thinks he's a creep. Perplexed, he has to be hipped to her condition by the cafe owners.
Meanwhile, Lucy's father Marlin and roided-up, super-lispy brother Doug (Sean Astin) lie to her daily by keeping up elaborate charades involving Oct. 13 newspapers, an Oct. 13 football game on VHS, painting over a wall so she can repaint it the next (and every) day, refilling her shampoo with just one dollop, and watching THE SIXTH SENSE every single night, all so she doesn't suspect that she has a serious brain injury. Later, Marlin realizes Lucy sings WOULDN'T IT BE NICE on the days she's with Henry, and that maybe Henry's not such a bad guy after all.
It's not just the logic-out-the-window stuff that makes DATES so frustrating. This is a movie with a serious tone problem. Is this a romantic tragi-comedy with characters that can exist in real life, like, say, PATCH ADAMS? Or is it a silly lowest common denominator movie with characters and events that can never happen in the real world, like ACE VENTURA? The answer is both, and that's the problem. We've all seen enough sci-fi movies to know that when you cross-pollinate species (or in this case, genres), the result is ugly at best and evil at worst.
I will concede that there's something about Sandler's everyday guy-ness that is appealing, though sometimes his lo-fi boyishness and dialogue delivery tilts more towards obnoxious than charming. When Lucy is told of her affliction and realizes she is actually dating Henry, she looks at him, and he responds, "Sorry I'm not better looking." If only the whole movie had that tone, instead of shots of a walrus puking buckets of vomit on an androgynous person. Even the scene where they are introduced to a guy who can only hold memories for ten seconds is played for laughs, when it should have been played for pathos. The camera should have stayed on Lucy and her realization of who she is, and how serious her condition is. But instead, we get schoolyard jokes about Doug's wet dreams.
Even DATES's characters are split into two categories; the real life ones are Lucy, Henry, Marlin and Dr. Keats (Dan Aykroyd). The rest are broad movie characters (more on this in a few seconds). So how can we care about real person Lucy when she lives in a world of movie characters? In fact, in one scene, Lucy herself becomes a broad character when she beats Ula (Schneider) so hard with a bat it would have easily pulverized his skeleton, killing him. This adorable girl would be guilty of attempted murder if she was in the real world. ("It's only an Adam Sandler movie....it's only an Adam Sandler movie....")
So DATES has major logic gaps, major tonal problems, and one major (as promised, by me) checklist of forced characters. For your consideration: Brother Doug, Henry's sidekick Ula (Schneider's Islander character may be the most offensive stereotype since Mickey Rooney's TIFFANY'S Asian), Henry's dumb and androgynous assistant Alexa, the old guy who says dirty things, the chef with the meat cleaver, and a special mention to Jocko the puking walrus. Speaking of which (drinking game alert!), check out (or not) the countless cutaways to the walrus snorting or the penguin "laughing" or spinning around, all to button jokes that are so low rent they are squatting. Even in the gag reel someone had the compulsion to include a shot of a cow shitting.
Yes, everything about this movie is wrong, even the newspaper headline about Lucy - "Stray cow causes an accident." It wasn't a stray cow, it was her dad who was looking at Lucy instead of paying attention to the road.
I've also been overlooking this gem of unbelievability. How does Henry, a goofy, mealy-mouthed toad of a man, manage to charm an opening montage worth of ladies with lies that wouldn't fool a penguin? Lies like he's...entering the priesthood, married, gay, doesn't believe in phones, and...he's a secret agent. And get this; his M.O. is to ply these female tourists with fake alcohol because it helps them "loosen up without impairing your ability to stay awake and have guilt-free vigorous sex with me." Why haven't I thought of that? Probably because it's creepy. And that's coming from me.
But Rich, are the jokes really that bad?? On the phone while performing an autopsy, one of his flings says, in subtitles (she's Asian), that "he pounded me like a mallard duck." Even the gags that work go haywire, like when Henry and Lucy say goodbye in a parking lot after they first meet. They each do a happy dance, masked by a van which pulls away revealing each other's goofiness. A well-played moment, except that it's so telegraphed that what could have been charming and sweet is ruined.
50 FIRST DATES was directed by Peter Segal (GET SMART, TOMMY BOY) and written by George Wing (this is his only IMDB credit). Wing’s script was originally much more dramatic, so it was probably better than this one. Also, it was transplanted from Seattle to Hawaii via Sandler’s instructions (Aha! I was right!).
So there you have it. My take on why this movie is so bad. But it's my fault for expecting more, instead of realizing that it really is only an Adam Sandler movie.
