50 First Dates

         Let me state for the record that I am generally not a fan of Adam Sandler.
       The typical Sandler movie is filled with sophomoric and/or offensive humor, and his standard character more often comes off as silly or stupid rather than the innocent in a corrupt world that he seems to be trying for.
       So it was with some trepidation that I approached 50 First Dates, Sandler’s latest film and the only new offering this week at Carmike Cinemas. And for the first several minutes of the film, I was afraid that my worst fears would be confirmed.
       As I watched, though, something marvelous happened – the crude jokes about bodily functions and sex, the laughter at the expense of those who are in some way “different,” gave way to a tender romantic comedy. 50 First Dates is a celebration of love, its basic premise that Sandler must make Drew Barrymore fall in love with him all over again every day.
       A perfect movie for Valentine’s weekend. Take a date – it doesn’t matter if it’s your first or your fiftieth.
       This could be Sandler’s most mature performance since The Wedding Singer in 1998 – another movie in which he was coupled with Barrymore, who has put together a string of successes as a fragile romantic heroine. She is a specialist in falling in love, and is again excellent in the role of the brain-injury victim Sandler woos.
       At the outset, Henry Roth (Sandler) is a self-indulgent, grown-up child, regularly seducing female tourists, then inventing absurd fictions (he’s a spy, he’s gay, he doesn’t believe in telephones) to avoid long-term commitment when they return to the mainland. (The movie is set in Hawaii, which provides gorgeous backdrops for the action.)
       Everything changes when he meets Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore), who has spent the past year re-living her father’s birthday, having lost her short-term memory in a car accident on that date the previous October.
       All the usual “attractions” of Sandler movies are here. A disgusting visual joke involving walrus vomit is just the worst of numerous double-entendres and potty jokes that his fans have come to expect. And the movie finds humor in individual disabilities – the lisp of Lucy’s brother (Sean Astin), which serves no dramatic purpose except to get laughs, and the memory loss of her fellow brain-injury patients, including “10-second Tom” (Allen Covert), so named because he has a more severe form of the same brain damage that Lucy suffers from.
       These characters and scenes are hilarious, and I did laugh. But my laughter makes me uncomfortable. Most children learn not to make fun of speech impediments in elementary school. And laughing at victims of brain injury – how sick is that?
       But then the movie grows up, just as Sandler’s character does. Reputedly, Sandler was drawn to this role because “Henry becomes a good guy rather than just being a good guy all the time.” As he comes to know Lucy and her over-protective father (Blake Clark) and brother, Henry comes to care for another human being, perhaps for the very first time.
       At the tender heart of the movie is a web of love that envelops Lucy and keeps her safe in what would be an intolerable situation for many. Her father and brother have suspended their own lives to re-live the one day that Lucy can know; the workers at the diner she visits for breakfast every morning collude in the deception.
       Every day for a year, she – and they – have the same dinner, the same pineapple upside-down birthday cake, the same videotape present from Lucy to her dad – even the same Vikings game watched each day via videotape. At least the Vikes won the game.
       Henry’s love for Lucy helps them all to move on, to find a way to live that goes beyond simple repetition even as Lucy continues to awake each morning thinking it’s Sunday, October 13. And the task of making her fall in love with him again each day, which provides many of the humorous episodes already familiar from the theatrical trailers, gives an admirable, and unaccustomed, depth to Sandler’s character.
       I may have to reconsider my feelings about this actor. . .