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Adam Sandler is a talented comedian, but in most cases, his humor tends to lean more toward sloppy, juvenile vulgarity than actual wit. He was brilliant on Saturday Night Live, but a good deal of his movies leave much to be desired. Two years ago when he starred in Punch-Drunk Love, I finally realized how truly amazing Sandler could be, and also how much of a shame it was that, like Jim Carrey, he can only make money when he makes a complete jackass of himself. However, 50 First Dates, though taking place in the vulgar vein of most of Sandler's movies, has a bit more maturity than his other projects, and it may be a step forward for mainstream Sandler fare. 50 First Dates is a unique romantic comedy, kind of a riff on both Memento and Groundhog Day, as unlikely a pair as that sounds. It also smacks of the slightly superior The Wedding Singer, though that may be because the romantic leads are the exact same than anything else. The film finds ladies' man Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), who lives in Hawaii, falling into the trap he's dodged for so many years for plenty of sexy one-night stands: Love. The woman he's fallen in love with is one Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore), and she seems to feel the same way about him after meeting at the local diner. However, when Henry goes to the diner the next day to further their relationship, Lucy acts as if she doesn't know him at all, and seems quite offended at the familiarity of which he speaks to her. That's when he's told that Lucy has short term memory loss, and forgets everything when she goes to sleep at night due to a car accident she was involved in a year ago. Henry is still determined to maintain a relationship with Lucy, and tries his best every day to make her fall in love with him, along the way encountering her father Marlin (Blake Clark) and brother Doug (Sean Astin), who aren't so happy about his moves. Perhaps springing from the energy and oddball romantics of the aforementioned Punch-Drunk Love, 50 First Dates is filled with a tingling kind of warmth uncommon to most of Sandler's other features. The entire storyline lacks a certain plausability to make everything gel as smoothly as director Peter Segal would want it to (I mean, really, would Lucy just wake up, have the entire past year explained to her, and then have sex with Henry right away?), but that's also part of the movie's success. It's so bent on the essence of true love that the implausability actually comes off kind of charming, and you're rooting for the characters' lives to end happily. With each other, preferably. Sandler's performance is funny and charming, much more so than in last year's Anger Management. There he seemed way over-the-top, and, well, angry...but here he is relaxed and easygoing, with nutty screwball charm pouring from his every frame. Drew Barrymore has proved previously that she can make a fine Juliet to Sandler's Romeo, and while she doesn't do as good as she did in The Wedding Singer, she still does a nice job playing off of Sandler. The two have a lot of rich, excellent romcom chemistry. It's also funny to see Sean Astin in the role of Lucy's bodybuilding, steroid-gulping, maybe-gay brother with a lisp after playing the valiant secondstring hero Sam in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Blake Clark, a regular in most of Sandler's movies, does pretty well here. I'm also extremely happy about the appearance of Dan Aykroyd as Dr. Keats, a neuorologist specializing in investigating short term memory loss. The guy is brilliant, one of the best comedians out there, and unfortunately, he's been in hardly anything as of late. I've been a fan of his since I saw Ghostbusters as a small child, and I'm hoping for a resurgence. So, while 50 First Dates is no When Harry Met Sally..., or even a Sleepless in Seattle, it is an above-average love story that is both funny and rewarding. Henry Roth grows up during the film, and you can feel Sandler doing the same. As a Hawaiian cover of "Over the Rainbow" plays over the last scene, it's hard not to smile, and exit the theater skipping happily along. --Courtesy of REELPICKS.CJB.NET-- email this review to a friend
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