50 First Dates

Reviewed by:
Paul Ulane

It looks like Adam Sandler may finally be growing up, and we couldn’t be more disappointed. The man who brought us masturbating penguins and Norm MacDonald stumbles into his late 30s in 50 First Dates, a nauseatingly sweet love story. Hawaiian veterinarian Henry Roth (Billy Madison) struts around his home island preying on hot, naïve tourists (anyone else smell bullshit?) until he falls for schoolteacher Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore). Unfortunately, her short-term memory resets each morning, rendering his charms useless. This hilarious disease forces Henry to win Lucy over again and again, which forces us into watching repetitive, flirty exchanges generations removed from the uproariously violent body-checks of Happy Gilmore. Dates flashes signs of life: Rob Schneider’s pothead island bum, Sean Astin’s lisping steroid freak, and a nicely played baseball-bat-beating keep hope alive. But Sandler’s box-office loyalties materialize somewhere around the halfway point, when any attempts at humor are replaced by confessions of love, weepy breakups, and Dan Aykroyd. (We wish we were kidding.) Who knew watching Adam Sandler grow up in public would be worse than watching Drew Barrymore grow up in public?

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