50 First Dates

Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 6.5 Significance Suppositions Story Style 9.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 3.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Unfortunately this PG-13 film is rife with gross-out humor, for crude sexual situations and statements (some homosexual), drug references, profane gestures, etc.(not that this is surprising from an Adam Sandler movie). None of these are useful to the storyline.

Story

This is a romantic comedy more than just a gross-out flick (making the gross-outs even less appreciated). The hero is a swinging animal trainer who falls in love with a girl who has daily amnesia because of an accident she was in. Every day she wakes up thinking it is the same day and all heck breaks loose whenever she uncovers the truth. Her family tries very hard to keep this from happening - basically reenacting the same day over and over again (it was nice to see that this condition was not really part of the comedic element of the film). So the hero must decide whether to live life like this (basically meeting his love every day for the rest of his life) or move on to other conquests.

[SPOILER WARNING!]

The hero decides to keep a video diary for her so that every morning she can watch it, discover her condition, and catch up on life before greeting the day. They eventually get married and at the end of the film we see her meeting her children for the "first" time. Apparently they lived happily ever after.

Suppositions

The film comes across pretty naturally. I suppose if all these elements were in place it could turn out like this. The problem I have is that the movie really does not present the myriad problems with such a relationship. Imagine waking up pregnant one day and not even knowing you had a husband? Imagine "meeting" your kids for the first time when THEY are parents! You've missed out on everything because all you can remember is going to bed as a single 20-something in Hawaii. Imagine the kids lives as the grow up with a mother who never knows who they are each day. How much time would you spend as her husband catching her up on life - it would be a 24 hour a day job. I really do appreciate the sentiment but I am not comfortable with unrealistic romances. I realize that that is the nature of romance movies - but I think it sends the typical false message from Hollywood that "love is enough." Granted the movie does a fine job of showing true, unconditional love. But let's face it, someday the hero is going to lose it in a moment of impatience and say, "Look, I know you don't remember your life and that sucks - but I have work to do so I can't spend all day telling you stories, and you're just going to forget it all again tonight anyway!!!" I'm not saying the movie should have included something like this - and you know, in a perfect world that never would have happened - but the movie takes place in the real world and fostering idealistic expectations of "true love" from other humans can cause harm as well.

Significance

The message the movie sends is terrific if unrealistic (at least in this life). True love (not just romantic love which is pretty much all we actually get to see here) is patient, kind, long-suffering . . . (hmmm where have I heard that before???) and the hero in this movie seems to display them all. Amidst all childish playground humor, the film manages to pull off a pretty touching story.