The challenge for Henry is to make Lucy fall in love with him every day, again, and again, and again. If you think you have worked out the set-up right from the beginning, you are more or less correct.
Comedies about amnesia are not exactly in the best of taste, but no-one has ever accused Sandler of good taste. The result is that she starts every day all over again, thinking that it is the day of her accident. Lucy Whitmore has a problem, too, and it’s that she has lost her short-term memory after a car accident. We are not talking Hepburn and Tracy territory, but this is top-notch casting for what is intended to be a purely commercial comedy. Sandler’s offbeat occasional grossity and Barrymore’s naive sweetness again meld to produce a truly engaging couple. In both The Wedding Singer and now here, Barrymore provides the best love interest Sandler has had on-screen. But something unexpected happens to Henry: he meets and falls in love with Lucy Whitmore, played by Drew Barrymore. The opening scene (don’t be late for this film or you will miss it) sets up Henry through the words of his many paramours. Henry Roth has a problem: he’s a pretty romantic guy, but he is totally and completely incapable of emotional commitment in his relationships.
This time he plays Henry Roth, a Jewish veterinarian at a Hawaiian version of Sea World, and he appears to specialise in walruses. I am increasingly willing to forgive Adam Sandler many things, partly because he almost always insists that his characters are Jewish, no matter what the context. Starring Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin & Dan AykroydĪdam Sandler’s new romantic comedy 50 First Dates will not beat on any Oscar doors, but carries unmistakable charm and lots of laugh-out-loud humour, albeit frequently of the adolescent kind. This film review first appeared in the Australian Jewish News on March 26, 2004