50 First Dates Plot

50 First Dates (2004) is a romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore and directed by Peter Segal.

Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), a Jewish marine veterinarian in Hawaii, meets Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore), a beautiful blonde, at breakfast. Usually a fairly promiscuous man, Henry can't get Lucy out of his mind and finds himself falling for her. They hit it off and Henry eagerly returns to the cafe the next day. Strangely, however, Lucy doesn't remember who he is.

It turns out that Lucy was involved in a car accident involving a stray cow and a tree on Sunday, October the 13th (her father's birthday), and suffered brain damage resulting in anterograde amnesia. Therefore, every morning she wakes up believing it to still be her father's birthday and is unable to remember anything that has taken place after that day.

Lucy's father (Blake Clark), a retired fisherman/sailor from the USS Badger, and her brother (Sean Astin), a would-be bodybuilder, do everything they can to keep Lucy from discovering her condition. Fortunately for them, since Hawaii's climate is generally stable year-round, there are no changing seasons to clue her in. Her late mother's best friend, the proprietress of the diner where she has breakfast every day, also helps shield her from the truth.

Every night Lucy's father and brother paint their garage walls white, as they were the morning of the accident, so Lucy can paint murals, as she did before. Every day is her father's birthday, complete with party hats, and Lucy's gift is of course always the same: a video of The Sixth Sense she had bought for him before the accident, which the two men dutifully watch with her without betraying any knowledge of the twist at its end.

In contrast to Groundhog Day, in which everyone reacts predictably to Phil's manipulations, in this movie what Henry tries one day never seems to work the next. He tries using a toothpick as a door hinge in her house of waffles one day and makes a big hit, but the next day she reacts differently, asking "Are you from some country where it's okay to put your hands all over someone else's food?" Henry has to watch his step, because proprietor Nick is only a few steps away and never seems to let go of his meat cleaver.

Henry's stunts to get acquainted with Lucy are matched only by her responses. To rebuff one approach, she pretends to speak only Chinese. Another time, Henry pretends he can't read the menu, crying in despair until Lucy comes over to comfort him and "teach him some of the words"; of course, she knew all along he was only pretending, but was touched that someone would try so hard to pick her up.

Told off by her father, Henry promises to keep away from the diner, but he figures his promise doesn't apply to meeting her other places. Every day he tries a new way of meeting her on the road, asking for a jump or pretending that his stoner buddy Ula (Rob Schneider) is beating him up. It's when he poses as a kidnap victim that Henry is found all tied up in the back of his truck and invited by Lucy's father to visit the house. Later Lucy sings at the top of her lungs, having the time of her life painting in the workshop. Her father reveals that the only times she sings are the days she meets Henry.

One day, though, Lucy sees a sheriff writing her a ticket for expired car tags and storms out of the diner to protest. "It's still October, see? Look at this newspaper!" To her consternation and dismay, what she thinks will be her vindication actually reveals the passage of a shocking length of time. She drives home and confronts her father, who is forced to confirm the bad news. Screaming and crying, she is comforted by the three men in her life: her calm, devoted father, who hands her a scrapbook with the news article of the accident (caused by their swerving to avoid hitting a cow) and a grisly picture of her lying in a coma in the hospital; her ditzy but loyal brother; and her new friend, or perhaps boyfriend, Henry.

They visit her neurologist (Dan Aykroyd), who explains her condition: Lucy's condition is not as bad as that of Ten-Second Tom (see also The Man with the 7 Second Memory), a man who has no short-term memory at all. Rather, she gets a whole day. But in the movie's premise, her brain fails to convert the short-term memories of the day into long-term memory when she sleeps.

Henry gets an idea. Instead of trying to shield Lucy from discovering her amnesia, why not make a short film that breaks it to her gently? So, the next morning she wakes up to find a videotape marked "Good Morning, Lucy." She places it into her VCR and watches it, her all-time favorite song, "Wouldn't It Be Nice," playing in the background. It's still a shock and she's still very sad to learn about her accident, but at least she doesn't run screaming to the end of the dock and cry for an hour. The home movie ends with Henry's gentle voice inviting her to come downstairs when she's ready, and her father will explain any questions she has.

The biggest question of the movie is how Sandler and Barrymore's characters can really be a couple. Lucy is smart enough to consider this question herself, and after several days of romance ("There's nothing like a first kiss", spoken by her three successive times on three successive days), she shows up at the aquarium with startling news. She's been keeping a scrapbook ever since Henry made the home movie (she's no passive object of care, but is her own woman despite her phenomenal mental handicap). Building on Henry's idea of filling her in on the cause of her condition (and a few bits of political news, like the fall of Saddam Hussein and the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger), she has been writing in her diary every night to provide continuity. She comes to realize that she's been holding Henry back from his life's dream of conducting walrus research off the Alaskan coast. So she breaks up with him, and removes him from her scrapbook.

Henry completes the work on his boat, and says goodbye to his friends. But Lucy's father leaves him with stunning news as well as a very interesting present. The news is that Lucy has moved back into the hospital, working as an art therapist for the other memory-loss patients. As Henry sails away from the island, he opens the present: a Beach Boys album containing Lucy's favorite song. As the CD plays "Wouldn't It Be Nice," Henry bursts into tears, cursing Lucy's father ("What an asshole!") for giving him such a heart-rending souvenir of his impossible romance.

Suddenly Henry has a vivid recollection: Lucy was only happy when (as the Beach Boys sang) they were together:

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up / In the morning when the day is new / And after having spent the day together / Hold each other close the whole night through?

Henry turns the boat around and runs into the hospital calling out Lucy's name. When he meets her in her art therapy classroom, he's hoping she remembers him.

"Lucy Whitmore? Do you have any idea who I am?" "No." "Ah, that.. sucks." "What's your name?" "Henry." "Henry, will you come with me? I want to show you something."

Lucy brings Henry to her studio, which is filled with dozens of paintings of Henry. Almost every night she's been dreaming of him. He is literally the man of her dreams.

In the final scene, Lucy wakes up to a revised home movie. This time, the update is that she's gotten married! She looks out the window to see icebergs under a clear Alaskan sky, and goes on deck to meet her daughter and husband (Henry) in the reassuring presence of grandpa. During the final scene "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole plays.

Critical response to the movie was decidedly mixed. Those major critics who enjoyed the film (such as New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott) praised the uplifting story while lamenting the seemingly excessive and incongruous amount of crude humor and drug references. Schneider and the character of Ula drew much ire from critics as distractions from the story (although a favorite scene was invariably the one involving the baseball bat).

One common criticism of the film was the opinion that the first fifteen minutes (up to Barrymore's first appearance) were of much lesser quality than the remainder, and gave a picture of Sandler's character that did not ring true to the sympathetic portrayal in most of the movie. Those fifteen minutes contain the majority of the humor designed to appeal to Sandler's fan base. This includes a scene of a walrus projectile vomiting on Henry's androgynous assistant (Lusia Strus), another character despised by critics. Many argued that the film could be watched from the point of Barrymore's arrival and that not only would nothing be missed, but that the main story would have more impact.

The final scene on the boat drew almost universal admiration for its subtlety and tone, and for pulling off a happy ending without cheating on the story's central premise.

Audience response to the film was overwhelmingly positive, although many viewers were also jarred by the contrast between the heavily romantic and thoughtful main plot and the general vulgarity of the scenes involving the secondary characters. Sandler and Barrymore won the award for Best On-Screen Team at the MTV Movie Awards. The two actors, who had previously worked together in the popular film The Wedding Singer, are said to regard 50 First Dates as one of their favorite personal efforts.

One irony of Henry's first video is when the screen says "Red Sox Win World Series" and then follows with "Just Kidding." This is a reference to the 2003 American League Championship Series, as the film was released in February 2004. Later in that year, however, the Boston Red Sox would indeed win the World Series.

The soundtrack album contains cover versions of songs that were originally recorded in the 1980s. This is probably a response to the previous Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore film, The Wedding Singer, which took place during that time period and thus, its soundtrack was filled with '80s songs by the original artists.