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 50
First Dates
Starring:
Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider and Sean Astin
Directed by: Peter Segal
Bluntly
Speaking? 50 First Dates is a background-noise
style rental at best. Go see one of the Oscar nominated films
you've been meaning to catch with the dough you'd spend on this
crapfest. It's too sweet for Sandler fans and too Sandler for
non-Sandler fans….go figure.
Okay
it's no secret I'm not a big Sandler fan, and I admit to walking
into the theater with an attitude of a child being forced to watch
an etiquette film from the 1950s. He says komedy and I say comedy
if ya know what I'm saying...But, I pride myself of disconnecting
myself - for the good of my readers - and watching a film as fresh
and without mindset. Oddly, I liked that devil movie thingy he
did. So I'm fair.
That having been said, and even though watching Rob Schneider
be beaten with a baseball bat in one particularly off scene did
seem a bit cathartic, the film still has an odious poodle-poo
stench to it.
Story
goes… Henry Roth (Adam Sandler) is a player. He lives in
Hawaii and feeds off vacationing women for his sexual needs. He's
smooth (not). But as with Sandler's sophomoric sense of humor
soirees, we are to grasp the idea this schlub Henry actually hoodwinkles
businesswomen into bed with stories like his being a secret agent,
or a high cliff diver and the like. Now George Clooney? Hellya,
we'd allow that slab of Grade A Mansteak to believe we believed,
just to get a peak beneath the tighty whities - but this
guy? Pah-lease.
Then
one day Henry has a boating mishap which lands him in a local
café. Here he spots Lucy (Drew Barrymore). He makes a play
and she's instantly smitten. But there's a catch. Lucy suffers
from short-term memory loss thanks to a blunt trauma to her head.
So player boy finally meets a girl he can, and does, fall for,
and she hasn't the faintest idea who he is after she sleeps. The
rest erases her memory and the day begins again - without him.
Henry
stages elaborate scenes to meet Lucy each day and works his way
into her life.
Sweet?
Yeah. Interesting premise? Yeah. But between the cute story and
the new and improved more sensitive version of Adam Sandler is
all the same ba-dump-dump jokes; canned and, frankly, just not
funny. Drew Barrymore is radiant, as always. And brings a bit
of her charisma to the screen, but still there's all that Sandler
mixed in, and it gets too diluted. Sean Astin shows up, sans the
furry Hobbit feet, to stretch his comic muscle. If he was given
less predictable dialog - he'd have succeeded. Rob Schneider is
the funniest thing about the film. 'Nough said?
Sandler
has made a fortune as the schtick-riddled comic with a perverse
and childish sense of humor. Even here as he is singing a love
song to "Lucy" he slips in tits and ass with penis jokes
- like a thirteen year-old that got a movie budget. Yech.
Snack
recommendation:
Feelski Filets of Mock-Walrus
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