An quite unforgettable movie

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2007)

I really don't know why some people have said that they found this film sad, and one even referred to the "melancholy ending". The tone of the film is, in fact, upbeat throughout, and if I had to suggest an alternative title for it, albeit one that wouldn't help much at the box-office, I would say "Love Conquers All". Despìte the inadequacies of her short term memory, Lucy, played by Drew Barrymore is cheerful. friendly, creative and positive in her outlook. She never gives rise to gloom.
As regards the smooth-talking Lander, his social career as a gigolo is shown to us so briefly and in such an amusing way (he escapes from his last adoring and gullible tourist by literally hopping on to a passing jet-ski in the manner of James Bond whose persona he was aping at the time), that we don't really have time to find his conduct despicable. From the moment that he meets and falls in love with Lucy/Drew he is absolutely sincere, except for corroborating the white lies her doting father has to keep up, so as not to upset her. He is also supportive, and self-sacrificing for the sake of her love and happiness, taking some hard knocks both physical and emotional.
Lander's Hawaian (in real life half Filipino) side-kick, Rob Schneider, very funny without being as gross as he usually is, with his innumerable offspring and mountainous native wife, shares both Lander's troubles and triumphs as the resident buffoon, in contrast to Lucy's lame-brained brother who is just pathetically stupid and not funny at all. Schneider helps his buddy and boss, the veterinarian Lander to care for the highly charismatic aquarium animals: walruses, penguins and dolphins, whose exuberant antics are endearingly spontaneous. At one point, when the sporadic lovers get round at last to mating, a pair of inquisitive dolphin voyeurs, watching the couple with noses pressed against the wet side of their glass-walled tank, have to be shooed away before the act can be consummated discreetly after the fade-out of the scene.
Unfortunately, the scraggy, androgynous Scandinavian assistant with braided blond hair and a frosty face looks and sounds like a wardress from Dachau, and does not fit well into the story.
At the end of the film, we have the weird situation where every morning Lucy has to be briefed by video and scrap book diary on her life since the accident that caused her odd complaint, and particularly now that she has a husband and children, whom she has quite forgotten since she fell asleep the previous night. However, she does appear to dream about her husband and has painted some good likenesses of him from memory.
Films frequently require the audience to watch unlikely events with suspended incredulity, and this is no exception. Assuming that such a medical condition actually exists in which the memory of each day's events is regularly blotted out on falling asleep, it is still hard to swallow that Lucy has gone on for so long with her daily routine, oblivious of the passing of time, until a cop gives her a ticket for an expired road tax licence. The equable winter-less climate of Hawaii might help with the deception, but surely she would have spotted a calendar, the date of a newspaper or watched recent news on the TV or heard it on the car radio, that would have contrasted with the same video that her dad played daily on their own set to keep her in the dark. But it is better not to think about such details and just sit back and enjoy a pleasant and wholesome love story. Having Drew Barrymore fall in love with you every day for the rest of your life is not an entirely unenviable fate!