Could Have Been A First Rate Romantic Comedy If It Had Been Taken Seriously

Rating: 5/10 (6 March 2006)

To be perfectly honest, I feel almost guilty giving this movie only 5/10. It has a lot of potential as a romantic comedy and there's a lot of fun in it, but for all the good points about this movie, it has a lot of weak points as well, that can be summed up as follows: Adam Sandler! I shouldn't be too hard on Sandler, I guess. I mean, he didn't produce this, or direct this, or write this. But he did star in it. From a strictly personal perspective, I simply don't care for Sandler; never have and never will. And even though I can't hold Sandler responsible for how this movie is put together, how it's put together and the fact that it fits Sandler to a "T" just reinforces to me what the problem with him is. It seems to me that he wants to be taken as a serious actor (the movies I've seen him in always seem to have something of a "serious" subplot to them) but I wonder if he just doesn't have the confidence to think he can pull it off, and so ends up falling back on the more juvenile plot lines that his movies will be largely remembered for.
This could have been a truly first-rate romantic comedy. The plot is probably nonsense from a medical point of view, but from a comedic point of view it's OK. Lucy (Drew Barrymore) suffers a brain injury in an accident and suffers short-term memory loss, which means that she remembers nothing since the accident, and she wakes up every day thinking it's October 13. (Sort of like "Groundhog Day," except that Bill Murray's character knew he was repeating the same day over and over again.) Everyone around her protects her from reality by going along with what she remembers. Then, one day, Henry Roth (Sandler) enters the diner where Lucy is having breakfast, and they fall head over heels. The next day he's back, and so's she - but she doesn't remember a thing about him. The movie then proceeds with the premise that the love-stricken Roth has to convince Lucy to fall in love every day with a man who to her is a complete stranger in order to keep the relationship going. And that basic premise is good, and it works very well, and to give credit where credit is due Sandler plays the part well, when he's taking it seriously. But therein lies the problem. This is an Adam Sandler movie, and it has to fall into typical Sandler-style juvenile thinking, which is displayed largely around a couple of characters.
Why does Lucy's brother Doug (Sean Astin) have to be a lisping steroid-abuser? It would been far more effective had he been just another serious, caring and compassionate person in Lucy's life trying to protect her, and the character of Ten Second Tom (Allan Covert) is meaningless. Setting them aside, though, my real pet peeve then appears: the character Ula (Rob Schneider.) Ula grates on the viewer and is totally unnecessary to the movie's development, and serves no purpose whatsoever - absolutely none - except to get Rob Schneider a paycheck. As to Sandler's Henry Roth, I have no problem with him being a veterinarian, even a vet who specializes in walruses (someone has to, I guess) but the trained walruses in the movie kind of give this a sense of being an adult-oriented kiddie movie.
What a shame. It's really a good idea for a movie, and if its producers, writers, director, etc. had chosen to treat it as a more serious romantic comedy, it could have reached great heights. Drew Barrymore was superb as Lucy, alternatively being in love with Henry and then hating him (depending on the day) and portrays brilliantly Lucy's fear and shock at discovering the reality of her existence. Dan Aykroyd's talents were largely and unfortunately wasted as Lucy's neurologist, Dr. Keats. Lesser known Blake Clark was convincing as Lucy's protective (and over-protective) dad, and Sandler himself did very well when he was treating this as a serious movie for grown-ups. But the whole typical Sandler-Schneider thing just got to me and I can't give it any better than a 5.