Product: 50 First Dates (Widescreen Special Edition) (2004)
Rating: 4.0
Drew Barrymore's time travels continue
I saw this 2004 film on TV after seeing _Never Been Kissed_ (1999) and _Donnie Darko_ (2001). The idea of continually reliving and reviewing one's life in a day seems to me to be a new twist on a theme in the previous two films on time travel through changing states of mind. The amazon product reviewer for _50 First Dates_ this time notes that the film had lots of opportunities to do something more with the main plot theme. Still, the film did stick in my mind because Gene Wolfe, one of my favorite science fiction writers, wrote a novel, _Latro in the Mist_ some decades ago about a literate Roman mercenary soldier in ancient Greece who also suffered brain damage so that short term daily experiences did not convert into long term memory. He too, like Lucy, keeps a diary/journal of the day's events which he reads the next morning. Wolfe's later fiction works develop through the storytelling and journal writing of his main characters, who love something: a woman, a cause, the truth, and so on. The reader's dramatic experience explicitly evolves with the developing testament of the main character. Consequently, Lucy's use of writing and film-making might seem like commentary on the role of art for the individual to transcend the limitations of memory and time.