50 First Dates

50 First Datesis a 2004 Americanromantic comedyfilm directed byPeter Segaland starringAdam SandlerandDrew Barrymore, withRob Schneider,Sean Astin,Lusia Strus,Blake Clark, andDan Aykroydin supporting roles. It follows the story of Henry Roth, a womanizing marine veterinarian who falls for an art teacher named Lucy Whitmore. When he discovers she has amnesia, and forgets him when she falls asleep, he resolves to win her over again each new day.
Most of the film was shot on location inOahu,Hawaii, on the Windward side and the North Shore. Sandler and Barrymore won anMTV Movie Awardfor Best On-Screen Team.
The film received mixed reviews but was a commercial success. It was later remade in India asSatyabhama(2007, in Telugu)and asOrmayundo Ee Mukham(2014, in Malayalam),in Japan as50 First Kisses(2018),in Iran asChap dast(2005), and in Mexico asComo si fuera la primera vez(2019).The film marked the second collaboration between Sandler and Barrymore, afterThe Wedding Singerand beforeBlended(both directed byFrank Coraci). During the end credits, it featured a dedication to the memory of Sandler's father Stanley, who had died at the age of 68 from lung cancer on September 9, 2003.
Henry Roth, a marineveterinarianatSea Life Park HawaiionOahu, only dates tourists to avoid any serious commitments. His closest friends are Ula, amarijuana-smokingIslander; Alexa, hisandrogynousassistant; Willy, his petAfrican penguin; and Jocko, awalrusthat lives at the park.
One day, Henry's boat breaks down, and while waiting for theCoast Guardat the Hukilau Café, he encounters art teacher Lucy Whitmore constructing architectural art with herwaffles. Assuming she is a local, which prevents him from introducing himself, he unsuccessfully attempts to return to his womanizing routine. The next day, he returns to the café and re-encounters Lucy; they instantly connect over breakfast and Lucy offers to meet him again for breakfast the next morning.
The next day, Lucy shows no recollection of ever meeting him. The restaurant owner Sue explains to Henry that the year before, Lucy and her father Marlin traveled to theNorth Shoreto pick apineapplefor his birthday. While they were returning, a cow wandered through a broken fence and onto the road, and the ensuing car accident resulted in Lucy being diagnosed withanterograde amnesia, whereby she remembers everything up until the night before the accident. Although Lucy's short-term memory functions normally during the day, that day's experiences are lost when she sleeps, and she wakes up every morning thinking that it is Sunday, October 13. To spare her from the trauma of her condition, Marlin and Doug, Lucy'ssteroid-addicted brother, re-enact Marlin's birthday daily.
Despite Sue's warning, Henry attempts to get Lucy to have breakfast with him several times, but when he unintentionally offends her one day he follows her home to apologize. There he meets Marlin and Doug, who instruct him to not speak to Lucy at breakfast. Heeding Marlin's specific orders to avoid the café, Henry arranges various daily schemes to meet Lucy on the road, most of the time managing to successfully impress her over multiple "first" dates and"chance" encounters. Later, Marlin and Doug permit Henry to continue encountering her when they discover Lucy regularly singingthe Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" in her painting studio just on the days Henry managed to meet her, the first major change in her routine since the accident.
One day at breakfast, Lucy notices a police officer writing aticketbecause of her expiredlicense plates. With the ruse exposed, she is distressed to learn that her friends and family have maintained the charade for so long. However, while analyzing her reaction, Henry surmises that her strongest reactions are to feeling betrayed by her loved ones, rather than the actual memory loss. He devises a new strategy to let her know the truth by creating a video with her friends to calmly explain the situation and, rather than continuing her pre-accident routine, they plant the video in her room with a note to play it upon awakening. The strategy succeeds, allowing Lucy to emotionally process her situation and simultaneously be updated on current events, including her relationship with Henry. The couple's relationship blossoms via this method, with Lucy enjoying every "first kiss", and they continue to refine the process while enduring some humorous setbacks. When Lucy eventually discovers that Henry has abandoned 10 years of planning for his research study of walruses inBristol Bayto help her manage her condition she decides that they need to end their romantic relationship and breaks up with him. Henry reluctantly helps her destroy her journal entries about their time together, effectively erasing it from her memory.
Weeks later, as Henry prepares to leave for his research study, Marlin informs him that Lucy is teaching an art class at a brain-injury institute. As a parting gift, he gives Henry a Beach Boys CD; and as Henry pilots the boat and cries while listening to the CD he suddenly realizes that, since Lucy's only sang "Wouldn't It Be Nice" on days when they "met", Marlin's gift may be his way of hinting that Lucy had newlearned memory retention. Henry hurries to Lucy's class, but despite not remembering him she happily reveals that she dreams of him nightly, and shows him dozens of portraits that she has painted of him, and they reconcile. Sometime later, she awakens and plays the tape marked "Good Morning Lucy", which now ends with her and Henry's wedding. Henry tells her on the tape that she is on his boat, and to put on a coat because it's cold outside. She is amazed to view glaciers through the porthole, and goes up on deck where she sees her father fishing, once again meets Henry, and joyfully embraces their young daughter, Nicole.
On October 29, 2002,Varietyreported thatColumbia Pictureshad bought aspec scriptfrom screenwriter George Wing, titledFifty First Kisses, withAdam SandlerandDrew Barrymoreoriginally in negotiations to star in the lead roles.Barrymore was sold on the script and wrote Sandler a letter suggesting it as their next film together sinceThe Wedding Singer.Sandler joined the cast in December 2002, and was announced as co-producer under his film studioHappy Madison Productionsalong withSteve Golin'sAnonymous Content.Sandler then recommended the script to directorPeter Segalwhile they were workingpost-productiononAnger Management. Segal agreed to direct, leaving him with only two days of break from work before filming.Segal revealed that the studio had changed the original title to50 First Datesbecause "marketing found that the term 'kisses' was turning off guys".
While the script is primarily credited to George Wing,Lowell Ganz,Babaloo Mandel,Tim Herlihy, andAllen Covertdid uncredited rewrites on it as well.Adam Sandler had also reworked the script, significantly transforming its genre from drama to comedy.Additional changes Sandler made to the script include moving its setting fromSeattletoHawaiiand rewriting a decent amount of interior scenes that takes place in a café. Director Peter Segal felt these scenes were "very claustrophobic" as well as derivative ofMy Dinner with Andre, encouraging Sandler to rewrite these and move the location to theKualoa Ranch.Sandler said that shooting in Hawaii "just seemed like the very best possible place to do it for many different reasons. You don't see many movies [set] there, so it was a great experience to film in a different locale. And it is such a spectacularly beautiful place for a romantic comedy."
Most of the film was shot on location inKaneohe,Kaʻaʻawa,Wahiawa,Makapuʻu,Waimānalo, andHonolulu, as well as inKāneʻohe Bayin 2003.The Hukilau Cafe where Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler had breakfast each morning is still standing in Laie, Hawaii.The opening credit scene of Hawaii is Chinaman's hat, a popular destination in itself.  The road they drive on each day is located in Ka’a’awa Valley, popular filming location within Kualoa Ranch and is viewable through film site tour provided by the estate.The estate also sells merchandise related to this movie and other movies filmed there. Due to the high cost of filming outside of thestudio zone, some interior scenes (such as inside the Whitmore residence) were shot on sets inLos Angelesdecorated to look like they were in Hawaii.
The soundtrack containscover versionsof songs that were originally recorded in the 1980s and 1990s. This includes mostlyreggae-style covers. It was a moderate commercial hit, reaching number 30 on theBillboard200and number 1 on the Top Soundtracks chart and Top Reggae Albums chart in the United States.
Despite being prominently featured in the film, neither the Beach Boys' 1966 "Wouldn't It Be Nice" norIsrael Kamakawiwoʻole's 1990 "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" was included on the soundtrack.
The soundtrack was produced by311's frontman,Nick Hexum. 311 provided a cover ofthe Cure's "Lovesong" for the soundtrack. It is heard over the film's end credits.
50 First Dateswas released onDVDandVHSon June 15, 2004.
OnRotten Tomatoes,50 First Dateshas a score of 45% based on 175 reviews from critics, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's consensus states, "Gross-out humor overwhelms the easy chemistry between Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, who bring some energy and yucks to this tale of a girl with short-term memory loss and the guy who tries to get her to love him."OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 48% based on 38 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".Audiences surveyed byCinemaScoregave the film a grade A− on scale of A to F.
Critics who enjoyed the film (such asThe New York TimesreviewerA. O. Scott) praised the uplifting story while lamenting the seemingly excessive and incongruous amount of crude humor and drug references.Roger Ebertgave it three out of four stars, saying "The movie is sort of an experiment for Sandler. He reveals the warm side of his personality, and leaves behind the hostility, anger and gross-out humor... The movie doesn't have the complexity and depth ofGroundhog Day... but as entertainment it's ingratiating and lovable."Rex Reedwas scathing in his review forThe New York Observer, calling the film "stupid, coarse and abysmally unfunny" while singling out offensive humor about brain damage.
Sandler and Barrymore won the award for Best On-Screen Team at the2004 MTV Movie Awards. The two actors, who had previously worked together in the filmThe Wedding Singer, are said to regard50 First Datesas one of their favorite collaborations as professional "soul mates".
Anterograde amnesiais a condition where one loses the ability to form new memories after damage to the brain. Damage to the hippocampus, which is located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, has been widely associated as a determining factor of the gravity of the condition.
In an article inThe BMJon depictions of amnesia in film, clinical neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale writes that50 First Dates"maintains a venerable movie tradition of portraying an amnesic syndrome that bears no relation to any known neurological or psychiatric condition". True amnesic syndromes are usually a result of a stroke, brain infection, or neurosurgery; very rarely does amnesia result from just car accidents.
In one case, a British woman named Michelle Philpots suffered traumatic brain injuries after two motor vehicle accidents in 1985 then 1990. Subsequently, she developed epilepsy in 1994, which led to her anterograde amnesia. She does not remember anything subsequent to 1994 and also can suffer from shorter term memory loss on the timescale of minutes. Her condition caused her to be fired from her office job after photocopying a single document over and over again, having forgotten she had already completed the task.Each morning, she wakes up believing it is 1994 and her husband, who she met prior to her accident, has to convince her of their 1997 marriage, using a photo album as proof.
In 2010, researchers described a woman who developed a similar kind of memory impairment after she was involved in a car crash. She described her memory as being normal for events on the same day, with memories from the previous day subsequently being lost each night. However, aneuropsychological testrevealed some improvement in recall for tasks which she had, unknowingly, performed the previous day. Although the woman claimed not to have seen50 First Datesprior to her 2005 crash (but has watched it several times since), she stated that Drew Barrymore was her favorite actress, leading researchers to conclude that her condition might have been influenced by some knowledge of the film's plot, and its impact upon her understanding of amnesia.
In July 2015, two people were discovered to have a form of anterograde amnesia that resembles the type depicted in the movie. One is a man in the UK, originally from Germany. He wakes up every day thinking it is March 14, 2005, because that is the day he underwent anesthesia for a dental procedure which led to this condition as a rare, unexplained complication (however, his anterograde amnesia, like that of others with the condition, causes him to forget facts not daily, but within 90 minutes).The other is a woman who reportedly believes every day is October 15, 2014; she was visitingKettering General Hospitalfor akickboxinginjury when she slipped and hit her head on a metal pole.
In 2015,the Hebrew HomeofRiverdale, Bronx, had started an experimental program in which residents with earlydementiawatch a video every morning wherein they see comforting messages and reminders from family members who they may still know. The program was to be evaluated for potential inclusion of more residents. Robert Abrams ofNewYork–Presbyterian Hospitalconsidered this idea "both innovative and thoughtful". Charlotte Dell, director of social services for the home, said the program was inspired by50 First Dates.