A sweet, humorous look at brain injury

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2006)

My husband and I were drawn to this movie when it first came out, but only got around to seeing it last week. We were curious because my husband has frontal lobe brain damage, an acquired brain injury he got from meningitis fifteen years ago. My husband of course is not exactly like the girl in the movie (Lucy) but he does have short and longterm memory loss, as well as weakened impulse control and anger problems. We are active in the Brain Injury Association. This matters because Adam Sandler actually did a really good thing in making this movie. People with brain injury, and their families, rarely get the chance to laugh about it. Our family watched this movie together-although we had to cover our four year-old's eyes a few times. But he (the 4-year old) asked his daddy if he really has brain damage, and my husband answered him, and we had a real conversation about brain injury, all thanks to this movie, which opened us up. Yes, it is a sweet funny love story. But it was also a healing experience for our family-and I think Sandler may not have realized that he was really doing a good thing with this movie!