Aloha! (50 First Dates (DVD))

Member Name: drewboy

Product:	50 First Dates (DVD)
Date:	15/06/05 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Drew Barrymore, Easy to Watch

Disadvantages: Characterisations, Cheap gags, some stereotypes

Life is good for Henry Roth. He is a successful vet at a sea life centre in Hawaii, with his charm and winning smile he has the pick of the visiting tourist out for a holiday romance and is looking forward to the day he can set sail on his boat to study his beloved sealife in their natural habitat. With this in mind, he steers a wide berth from any kind of commitment, preferring to tell his conquests wild stories about what he actually does for a living in order to keep his bachelorhood intact.

Then one day, he steps into a local diner (with a strange specialty of spam) and spies a very pretty blonde constructing her waffles into a structure of some sort and strikes up a conversation with her. He and Lucy hit it off right away and both decide that they should meet for breakfast the next morning to continue the conversation they have started.

So, the next morning, he brightly strolls into the diner however when he sits down next to her, she is cold and dismissive and states that he has never met him before and it takes the native waitress to pull him to one side to explain about Lucy’s short term memory condition meaning that she re-lives the same day over and over. He is transfixed with her however and decides there must be a way for him to get into her heart……


For me, any film involving Adam Sandler is likely to be either a hit or a miss, more often than not a miss. However, I am a big fan of Drew Barrymore and generally have enjoyed most of her recent offerings.

The basic plot is ok, if a little far fetched. Lucy (Barrymore) sustained some brain damage in a car accident meaning that she has very little short term memory and every night she goes to sleep, she forgets the whole day and wakes up thinking it’s the same day every morning. Because of this, her father makes sure that everything about the day is perfectly re-created so that she can go about her business none the wiser to her condition. Then along comes serial womaniser Henry and falls for her before knowing that she has this condition. This is the first thing that I have a problem with here. The character is presented to us as being a completely commitment phobic so for him to suddenly change to the romantic, Lucy obsessed man he does, is a little hard to accept. Yes it is meant to show the whole ‘love at first sight’ theory, however at this point in the film I didn’t really feel the chemistry for that to have happened.

The resulting story is that Henry spends every morning on the first date and goes to great lengths to try and win her affections as each morning she reacts differently to him. Taking the plausibility factor to one side, this does result in some funny and touching moments and as the film progresses, the chemistry between the two does get better. I did feel however, that the script was a bit lacking and a lot of the time, they did resort to going for the cheap laughs, although with Adam Sandler in the film, this really wasn’t unexpected, yet still a little disappointing and it detracts from the romantic aspect of the film in my view.

Coupled with the rather simple plot line, the characters are somewhat simple and there is little proper character development apart from the obvious. We see Henry realise the error of his past ways, we see the Lucy’s father struggle with his guilt over the accident (where he was driving) and get to know Henry and his suggestions of how best to deal with her condition but that’s about it. They all just seem to plod along, reliving the same say for a lot of the movie. Again, there are a few characters thrown in seemingly just to get the cheap laugh and worst of all for this was Henry’s assistant at the sealife centre Alexa (Lusia Strus). Her character plays on all the worst stereotypes of a Russian female and the fun poked at her expense seems to be so much out of place in a film that’s got such romantic themes running through it. Also, Lucy’s brother Doug (Sean Astin) is so one dimensional and soulless, you really wonder why they would stoop to such a length if they had any confidence in the films ability to create laughs in the first place. Then there is Henry’s friend Ula (Rob Schneider) who quite frankly brings far too much smut and innuendo to the piece and seems way out of place character wise.

The direction of the film was on the whole, not too bad. It managed to keep the story moving at a decent pace and did well to eventually show the relationship progress. I did feel that director Peter Segal (Anger Management, Nutty Professor 2, Naked Gun 33 1/3) missed the opportunity to use the scenery of Hawaii to its fullest potential and to be fair, this could have been set in any sunny part of the US as the shots were not particularly based around the scenery. This and the fact that there were very few native’s in the film (and those that were suffered being stereotyped) added to the lack of ‘Hawaiinness’ to the film.

The soundtrack, was again, ok. Not very memorable however it did seem to fit with the moment that each song was playing. A lot of it was re-hashed 80's numbers with a few more up to date songs thown in for good measure but on the whole, quite unremarkable.

Overall, I do have to say that I did enjoy the film, however it really wasn’t that memorable which is quite ironic when you consider the films major plot theme was memory loss! If only they had not went for the cheap gags, put a bit more effort into making it feel Hawaiian and had a bit better characterisation, it would have been a lot better. I have given the film 3 stars and do recommend it as a good film to watch with your brain turned off!

Aloha people!


drew

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