By Robert Scucci
| Published
Earlier this week, I saw that 50 First Dates was streaming on Netflix, and figured I’d give it a go for old times sake. Full disclosure, I really wanted to dunk on this one because I haven’t watched the movie since 311’s cover of The Cure’s “Love Song” for the soundtrack was making its rounds on MTV2 when the channel was still playing music somewhat regularly.
The reason I wanted to dunk on 50 First Dates, you ask? I remembered the premise being kind of creepy because Adam Sandler’s Henry Roth (which sounds like a serial killer’s name from a show like Criminal Minds) basically tricks a woman who may as well be Leonard Shelby from Memento into loving him, except she’s not covered with self-drawn, ballpoint prison tattoos to remind her of her memory loss.
Now here’s where I take my lumps and admit that I’m in the wrong because, like Drew Barrymore’s Lucy Whitmore, my memory of the movie has been corrupted over time, and 50 First Dates is actually wholesome as hell.
I Was Wrong, So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
In any other context, 50 First Dates wouldn’t work because on its face it’s a story about Henry Roth, a womanizing marine veterinarian who runs train on female tourists visiting Oahu, Hawaii because he fears commitment. When he happens upon Lucy at Sue’s (Amy Hill) café, they immediately hit it off, and engage in the kind of flirting you’d expect to happen over elaborate waffle architecture and coffee. Absolutely smitten with Lucy, Henry is ready to finally commit to the woman of his dreams, except there’s one problem: Lucy was in a car accident one year prior and suffers from anterograde amnesia.
In other words, Lucy remembers the events in her life that lead up to her accident, but her new, post-accident memories get wiped clean every night when she falls asleep.
Desperate to win Lucy over every day, Henry sets up elaborate scenarios that look like chance encounters with her so he could get her attention and try to win her affection. From asking her to help jump-start his car to staging a scene to look like his best friend Ula (Rob Schneider) is assaulting him so she’ll come to his rescue (one of funniest scenes in 50 First Dates), Henry manipulates Lucy and takes advantage of her memory loss so he could continue his one-sided relationship with her under these less-than-ideal circumstances.
This kind of obsession could be seen as problematic in any other movie because Henry was told to stop pursuing Lucy, but he continues to do so anyway with little to no regard to how damaging his pursuit could be to her psyche. But for some reason, it works in 50 First Dates.
50 First Dates Doesn’t Work Without Lucy’s Family
At first, Lucy’s father, Marlin (Blake Clark), and her older, roid-raging brother, Doug (Sean Astin), are protective of Lucy, and for good reason. Not wanting to shock Lucy with the news that she’s been living the day of her accident (Marlin’s birthday) on repeat because she can’t form new memories in 50 First Dates, Marlin and Doug go to extreme lengths to protect her by eating pineapple cake every day, watching the same football game, and ending the night by viewing M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, which surprises Lucy with its twist ending every time even though Marlin and Doug probably want to gouge their eyes out every single time because they already know what’s coming.
It was around this time that I had a change of heart about 50 First Dates because everything comes down to intention in this rom-com that I may have preemptively been a little too hard on in retrospect before going into my second viewing.
Sure, it’s messed up that Marlin and Doug lie to Lucy every single day, but they’re doing it for wholesome reasons that I suspect anybody would try to do if they had the resources (and 500 copies of the same newspaper to keep the ruse going). At first apprehensive toward Henry’s advances, Marlin realizes that Lucy is noticeably happier whenever Henry is around, and allows him to try a new method that’s a little less time consuming because Henry’s right– one day years later, Lucy will eventually notice that everybody’s aging, and she’ll have to confront her memory loss through more practical means.
Opting to make new video tapes for Lucy every single day in 50 First Dates, Henry is 100 percent devoted to getting the sorrow out of the way first thing every morning and catching her up with current events so they could live their lives together and move the relationship forward, which actually has a positive effect on her memory.
One Of The Better Adam Sandler Rom-Coms
I’ve said in the past that my mileage for Adam Sandler varies from film to film, but when he’s in the “likeable goofball” mode without going too over-the-top, he knows how to get the job done. I also can’t fault the guy too much for cracking the code in the form of hiring all of his friends to star in movies with him at beautiful locations because as long as it’s considered “work” he can do whatever the hell he wants.
I apologize for going into watching 50 First Dates with the intention of ripping it to shreds. In any other context, the whole “somebody taking advantage of a woman’s memory loss for their own selfish gain” plot would fall flat because it’s essentially stalking somebody with a mental handicap. But thanks to Lucy’s family and friends, and the sincere place that Henry’s advances are coming from, I have to admit that I was wrong, and there’s nothing creepy at all about this movie.
I’m not saying that you should stop and help a stranger who has their jumper cables out in the middle of the night because that has the potential to be dangerous (and they should be a functional adult with a AAA membership, let’s be real), but you’ll be totally safe streaming 50 First Dates on Netflix in the comfort and privacy of your own home.
