Lame Comedy

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2004)

`50 First Dates' is bad, a comedy romance that is totally unreal. The stars portray caricatures, not characters. This movie supposedly takes place in Hawaii, but the main exterior shots, lasting a total of about 8 minutes, seem to have been filmed in Waikiki by Chinaman's Hat Island and on either an isolated road in the Oahu's interior or in Maui by former pineapple fields. In any case, Hawaii never looked worse, with the movie having a consistent muddy picture that was probably not a projectionist focus problem. In Hollywood now, you can have a career even if you have no talent, look strange and have a crummy voice e.g. the career of Owen Wilson. If Adam Sandler continues to star in unappealing comedies like `50 First Dates,' he will end up with a core audience of teenagers who will watch almost any swill for the first weekend in release. This movie represents a precipitous decline in quality from `The Wedding Singer.'