Review of 50 First Dates (2004) by Nikki P — 24 Sep 2013

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

Henry Roth meets Lucy Whitmore and thinks he's finally found the girl of his dreams, until he discovers she has short-term memory loss and forgets all about him the next day.

Just because Adam Sandler was in this, I was already dreading it, but I'll give anything a chance. But it turned out to be far worse than I could have expected!

First of all, as you can probably guess, the overly crass humour just annoyed the fuck out of me. Any of Rob Schneider's screen time was especially insufferable. But on top of that, the romantic side of the story is so sappy that it really gives you whiplash when it's playing off such vulgar humour. So it fails as a romantic comedy because the romance and the comedy contrast too sharply.

And don't even get me started on my issues with the film's morals! That's a discussion for a full review. But here's the gist of it: even though everyone had good intentions, I just felt like they were all simply exploiting Lucy regardless. Henry himself clearly has a conscience and knows it'd be wrong to take advantage of his fear of commitment... but he does so anyway. And as for Lucy's father and brother... well, the longer you keep up a charade, the harder it's likely to bite you in the ass.

So there you go. I hated almost everything about this movie, and I just felt bad for Drew Barrymore for appearing in it.

My rating: 20%.