The flick of laughter and forgetting

Noel Vera

"50 First Dates" is yet another Adam Sandler foray into Male
Sensitivity, only this time the director isn't some hotshot young
filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson, trying to get mileage out of
Sandler's violent-geek persona writ stark, unexplained, and
unsettling, the way he did in "Punch-Drunk Love." That movie was a
freak of nature, an unholy cross between Sandler's aggressive-idiot
style of comedy and Anderson's arthouse sensibility. As usual with
Anderson, the weakest part of his film was the script: we're asked
to believe that Sandler's dysfunctional geek would be able to run
his own business without running it into the ground; worse, we're
asked to believe that a girl as gorgeous (albeit in an
unconventional way) as Emily Watson could actually be interested in
him and not run for her life at the first sign of a freak-out.

Other than that, zeroing in on Sandler's lovelife (and not on the
predicaments of half a dozen people as Anderson did in, say, "Boogie
Nights" or "Magnolia") did help Anderson create at least one
individual in his career that actually showed signs of character
development, or at least suggest a complex interior life (even if
that interior life doesn't make much sense); it helped give Sandler
more of an edge than he previously had in his dumbed-down, watered-
down comedies--a more austere, more realistic flavor that,
paradoxically, made him all the more appealing. The result was
easily the most complex Sandler comedy ever made, as well as the
most focused (and accessible) Anderson film yet made.

After Anderson, I suppose Sandler couldn't just go back to the low-
jinks of "Little Nicky" (or maybe it was the critical butchering of
his wretched remake of Frank Capra's "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" that
clued him in). So he took a page out of Harold Ramis' metaphysical
romantic comedy "Groundhog Day" and posited a girl named Lucy
Whitmore (Drew Barrymore) who has lost her short-term memory; every
time she goes to sleep she wakes up with all recollection of
yesterday's events completely wiped out--a permanent tabula rasa, as
it were.

Falling for this girl and her predicament is Henry Roth (Sandler), a
heartless Hawaiian Romeo who has set himself the rule never to date
island girls; his dozens of liaisons have been with women, mostly
drop dead gorgeous (plus one man) who eventually had to fly back to
the mainland, and consequently out of his life (this being Sandler
we're talking about, the movie instantly qualifies as a fantasy).

Lucy is different, she makes him work for his pleasure; because she
forgets the next day, every morning he has to start again at square
one. This, I suppose, is the official explanation for why he
perseveres against all odds, though I have a hard time buying it. I
don't see much of a connection between the island Lothario we see at
the beginning of the picture and the more considerate lover that
emerges after their first meeting (it would have been more realistic
for him to go on an aggressive casual-sex spree every time he runs
into a blank wall with Lucy). I also don't see much of a point to
the predicament's resolution (please skip the rest of this paragraph
if you actually want to bother seeing this movie): so she DOES
remember him--in her dreams, or in her subconscious--so what? Does
he need some kind of sign from god that she remembers him? This may
be medically feasible, for all I know; dramatically, it's a cheat,
an easy out, a quickie proof of her love (if it's quick and easy,
it's probably not love; that should be made an axiom in writing
romantic comedies).

The movie should be a better film than "Groundhog Day;" it's
basically the same problem, but with a better premise (a mental
rather than metaphysical condition: stronger, more realistic--
only, "Groundhog" holds the far more terrifying possibility that its
condition has no rational basis for being). The difference here, I
suppose, is that Ramis is a far less sentimental and far more
skillful (at least with "Groundhog") storyteller than Peter Segal
(director of "50 First Dates")--the wheels grind noisily every time
the movie has to shift gears from gleeful Sandler comedy to soulful
Sandler romance; also, Sandler is no Bill Murray. Murray
in "Groundhog Day" has the courage to create a completely
unredeemable character, a dissolute cynic who absolutely loathes the
small town he's trapped in. When the trigger is sprung and the jaws
close fatefully on the protagonist's leg, Sandler immediately rolls
over and turns into a sweetheart; Murray struggles mightily, and the
drama comes from the way he struggles, to the point of despair and
beyond.

What doesn't wreck the picture, what makes it work (somewhat) and
gives it (a little) heart, is Barrymore. You might say Barrymore has
this instant rapport with the camera; she expresses herself,
directly and simply, straight from the big screen. She's made this
gift of hers do service in excellent films (Spielberg's "E.T.," Andy
Tennant's charming "Ever After") and not-so-excellent films
("Firestarter," "Poison Ivy"). She makes you care deeply about her
character; makes you want to weep, copiously, at the fact that all
the joy and love Roth has made her felt will be forgotten by
sunrise. She even does the near-impossible with her huge eyes, baby-
fat cheeks and kissy lips--convince you, from the way she looks with
absolute and artless adoration, that maybe there's something to
Roth, something warm, soulful, human, something that could inspire
the look you see flowing from her eyes; maybe there's real love in
Roth, if he can make Lucy look at him just that way. Then the camera
turns to Sandler, and the spell is broken, just like that.

(First published in Businessworld, March 19, 2004)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)