50 First Dates
50 First Dates is a 2004 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Segal and starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, with Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, Lusia Strus, Blake Clark and Dan Aykroyd in supporting roles. It follows the story of Henry Roth, a womanizing marine veterinarian who falls for an art teacher named Lucy Whitmore. When he discovers she has amnesia, and forgets him when she falls asleep, he resolves to win her over again each new day.
Most of the film was shot on location in Oahu, Hawaii, on the Windward side and the North Shore. Sandler and Barrymore won an MTV award for Best On Screen Team.
The film received mixed reviews but was a commercial success. It was later remade in India as Satyabhama (2007) (in Telugu)[2] and as Ormayundo Ee Mukham (2014) (in Malayalam),[3] in Japan as 50 First Kisses (2018),[4] in Iran as Chap dast (2005) and in Mexico as Como si fuera la primera vez in 2019.[5] The film marked the second collaboration between Sandler and Barrymore, after The Wedding Singer and before Blended (both directed by Frank Coraci), and also featured a dedication to the memory of Sandler's father Stanley, who had died at the age of 68 from lung cancer on September 9, 2003, during the end credits.[6]
Plot[edit]
Henry Roth, a marine veterinarian at Sea Life Park Hawaii on Oahu, only dates tourists to avoid any serious commitments. His closest friends are Ula, a marijuana-smoking Islander; Alexa, his androgynous assistant; Willy, his pet African penguin; and Jocko, a walrus that lives at the park. One day, his boat breaks down, and while waiting for the Coast Guard at the Hukilau Café, he encounters art teacher Lucy Whitmore constructing architectural art with her waffles. Assuming she is a local, which prevents him from introducing himself, he unsuccessfully attempts to return to his womanizing routine. The next day, he returns to the café and re-encounters Lucy; they instantly connect over breakfast and Lucy offers to meet him again for breakfast the next morning.
The next day, however, Lucy unfortunately shows no recollection of ever meeting him. The restaurant owner Sue explains to Henry that the year before, Lucy and her father Marlin travelled to the North Shore to pick a pineapple for his birthday. While they were returning, a cow wandered through a broken fence and onto the road, and the ensuing car accident resulted in Lucy being diagnosed with anterograde amnesia, whereby she remembers everything up until the night before the accident; although her memory functions normally during the day, her daily experiences are lost when she goes to sleep. To spare her from horrifically reliving the accident, Marlin and Doug, Lucy's steroid-addicted brother, re-enact Marlin's birthday daily.
Despite Sue's warning, Henry attempts to get Lucy to have breakfast with him several times, but when he unintentionally offends her one day, he follows her to her house to apologize, but Marlin and Doug instruct him to leave her alone. However, Alexa advises Henry to look for a loophole in said instruction. Heeding Marlin's specific orders to avoid the café, Henry meets Lucy on the road through the following days, managing to successfully impress her over multiple "first" dates and "chance" encounters. Later, Marlin and Doug permit Henry to continue when they discover Lucy regularly singing the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" in her painting studio, the first major change in her routine since the accident.
One day, Lucy notices a police officer writing a ticket because of her expired license plates. With the ruse exposed, she is distressed to learn that her friends and family have maintained the charade for so long. However, while analyzing her reaction, Henry surmises that her strongest reactions are to feeling betrayed by her loved ones, rather than the actual memory loss. He devises a new strategy to let her know about the truth by creating a video with her friends to explain the situation calmly; rather than allowing her pre-accident routine to continue, they plant the video in her room with a note to play it upon awakening. The strategy succeeds, allowing Lucy to process the events of the video and simultaneously be updated on current events, including her relationship with Henry. The couple's relationship blossoms via this method, and they continue to refine the process while enduring some humorous setbacks. However, when Lucy discovers that Henry has decided to abandon ten years' worth of planning for his research study of walruses in Bristol Bay to help manage her condition, she decides that they need to end their romantic relationship. Henry reluctantly helps her destroy her journal entries of their relationship, effectively erasing their time together.
Some weeks later, while Henry is preparing to leave for his research study, Marlin informs him that Lucy is teaching an art class at an institute. As a parting gift, he gives Henry a Beach Boys CD; Henry suddenly realizes that Lucy's singing of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" occurred on days when they "met", indicating new learned memory retention. Despite not remembering him when he arrives at her class, she happily reconciles with him by revealing that she has dreamt of him nightly via her illustrations of some of their adventures. Some time later, she awakens and plays the tape marked "Good Morning Lucy", but it noticeably ends with her and Henry's wedding. Realizing that she is on his boat, which finally made it to Alaska, she goes up on deck, meeting their young daughter Nicole.
50 First Dates: Love songs from the Original Motion Picture
Critical reception [edit]
On Rotten Tomatoes, 50 First Dates has a score of 45% based on 175 reviews from critics, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's consensus states, "Gross-out humor overwhelms the easy chemistry between Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, who bring some energy and yucks to this tale of a girl with short-term memory loss and the guy who tries to get her to love him."[20] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 48% based on 38 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[21] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A− on scale of A to F.[22]
Critics who enjoyed the film (such as The New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott) praised the uplifting story while lamenting the seemingly excessive and incongruous amount of crude humor and drug references.[23] Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars, saying "The movie is sort of an experiment for Sandler. He reveals the warm side of his personality, and leaves behind the hostility, anger and gross-out humor... The movie doesn't have the complexity and depth of Groundhog Day... but as entertainment it's ingratiating and lovable."[24] Rex Reed was scathing in his review for The New York Observer, calling the film "stupid, coarse and abysmally unfunny" while singling out offensive humor about brain damage.[25]
Sandler and Barrymore won the award for Best On-Screen Team at the MTV Movie & TV Awards. The two actors, who had previously worked together in the film The Wedding Singer, are said to regard 50 First Dates as one of their favorite collaborations as professional "soul mates".[26]