Sandler's usual low-brow humor spoils the romantic mood for '50 First Dates'

Friday, February 13, 2004

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

In the crude-humor romantic comedy, "50 First Dates," Adam Sandler plays a Hawaii-based marine biologist who gives up his Lothario ways when he falls in love with a beautiful young woman (Drew Barrymore) suffering an extreme syndrome of short-term memory loss.

MOVIE REVIEW

50 FIRST DATES

DIRECTOR: Peter Segal

CAST: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Sean Astin

RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for crude sexual humor

and drug references

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace, Longston Place 14, Majestic Bay, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C-

Since a traffic accident the year before, she's retained all her long-term memory, but when she falls asleep each night, she forgets everything that happened to her on that particular day -- including meeting and succumbing to the charms of the hero.

So every day the poor, love-sick jerk has to start all over again from square one. And when he does get her to go out with him, it's like a first date -- hence the title. (Though, thankfully, the title lies: there are not 50 first dates, more like nine or 10).

It's a fanciful and marginally original romantic premise and, somewhere in its heart, the movie wants to be a touching and structurally innovative love story -- something on the order of, say, Bill Murray's 1993 classic, "Groundhog Day."

Moreover, Sandler and Barrymore generate some believable, if low-voltage, chemistry: they're both so shallow and conceited and dingy that you think -- yes! -- in real life, these two people probably would go for each other in a second.

There's also some pretty Polynesian scenery, a menagerie of cute animals (a penguin and several animatronic walruses) and clever support from Rob Schneider (as a Hawaiian stoner) and Sean Astin (who's aged so much since "Lord of the Rings" he's barely recognizable).

But the writing and direction is nowhere near smart enough to get this thing off the ground, and the stars don't have the substance to seduce us into accepting its premise as anything more than an overlong and never-very-funny "Saturday Night Live!" sketch.

And whatever credibility the movie achieves as a whimsical romance is regularly smothered by the usual barrage of Sandler-movie vomit, bathroom and penis jokes, which are injected in every scene with an almost mathematically formulaic precision.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.