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Movie Review
Even bubbly Drew Barrymore can't save this 'Dates'

By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

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Like "Along Came Polly" last month, "50 First Dates" is an awkward blend of date movie and preadolescent comedy; long before the romance kicks in, we get to watch a walrus vomit. Sandler plays Henry Roth, an aquarium vet in Hawaii with a foul-mouthed sidekick (Rob Schneider) and a history of short-term relationships. When he spies the fetching Lucy (Barrymore) making a teepee out of her waffle at a diner, he thinks he's found a soul mate — for this week, anyway.

Turns out Lucy's a little more complicated: Thanks to a head injury suffered a year ago (in a complicated accident involving a cow and a pineapple), she has no short-term memory. This means that every day, Henry has to re-introduce himself and start over. "Groundhog Day" meets "Memento," you might say.

Movie review Showtimes and trailer *½ "50 First Dates," with Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, Lusia Strus, Blake Clark, Dan Aykroyd. Directed by Peter Segal, from a screenplay by George Wing. 96 minutes. Rated PG-13 for crude sexual humor and drug references. Several theaters.

There's the grain of a good idea here, and a few of the movie's scenes (in particular, its oddly touching ending) hint at what might have been. But the screenplay (credited to Seattle writer George Wing, but bearing a number of unmistakably Sandlerian touches) is too schizophrenic to hold up. The problem isn't so much that the premise is far-fetched — it is, but the brilliant "Groundhog Day" was no less so — but that we can't connect to these characters.

Rather than establishing Henry and Lucy as people with charm, wit and human foibles (as the early scenes in "Groundhog Day" do for its characters), "50 First Dates" never lets them emerge. Director Peter Segal instead fritters away the movie on walrus-penis jokes, elderly Hawaiians who swear a lot, Lucy's lisping brother (Sean Astin, a long way from Middle-earth), and Henry's sexually ambiguous colleague (Lusia Strus, in a role that seems like a cruel joke). It's all very 12-year-old-boy, which is to say very Adam Sandler, and Barrymore becomes just a blond blip in the story.

Sandler, who demonstrated in "Punch-Drunk Love" that he can be charming with the right material, is back to his usual tricks here: the expressionless, regular-guy bleat of his voice; the deadness of his eyes. Occasionally, he looks at Barrymore and you see a flicker of something more, but that's all it is, like the faltering sputter of an engine that just won't start.

The movie isn't a total disaster — it features the most well-trained walrus I've ever seen (he's more animated than Sandler), not to mention an impeccable performance from a penguin in a little Hawaiian shirt.

Those looking for romance at the multiplexes this Valentine's Day weekend, however, might do better at home with a rental.

And there's an odd life-imitates-art thing going on with "50 First Dates" — you might find, a day after seeing it, that you hardly remember it at all. Unlike poor Lucy, though, you might be grateful.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company