Rom Com Roundup: 50 First Dates [6 of 30]

[Rom Com Roundup is a project where I watch 30 romantic comedies I've never seen from now until valentine's day and document how it affects my outlook on love. (Link to the full list of movies)]

The movie: 50 First Dates

The Blurb: Adam Sandler is a Hawaiian veterinarian playboy (yep, seriously) who falls in love with a girl. Sounds pretty conventional, but here comes the twist: she has no short term memory! So every morning when she wakes up, she can’t remember anything from the previous day. So weirdly, Sandler, who I THINK likes her though I’m honestly even sure, decides to try to win her favor every single day. Hence the name, 50 First Dates. Oh, and Rob Schneider is a Hawaiian pothead with one eye, who again proves that he’s only funny when relegated to side roles in Sandler movies.

The Conventions: Aside from the AMNESIA, there’s: the cute animals, a nice montage, breakup in the rain, gratuitous Rob Schneider cross dressing scene

Did I Cry? Nope. No movie has managed to break that threshold. Which will be the first!

Current State of Mind: I can’t figure out if my mind is slowly becoming mush, or if my taste in movies is getting worse, or if 50 First Dates was actually kind of charming. I didn’t want to like this movie from the start, but it fully won me over by the end. Even though Sandler is completely unbelievable as a charming guy, or the logistics of the plot are utterly ridiculous, or the movie continually strives to be as conventional as possible. I don’t know, something about it was just enjoyable.

Maybe it’s the fact that one of my favorite parts about falling for someone is that threshold you pass when you finally get to talk to them about when you both started liking each other, or all the funny things you noticed about them when they didn’t know you were looking. The little things about them that made you realize you wanted to be a part of their life. Half of this movie is essentially Sandler telling Barrymore all those things, and y’know what? She sells it, that look that communicates this idea that the person can’t believe you’d ever notice them, and being totally won over by it. It was very endearing, even if it wasn’t done in the most innovative way.

I’m not entirely sure how this movie affects my mind, but I hope to god there are some 27 Dresses still left in the clip (isn’t that terrible, that I’m WISHING for that?). Because I don’t know if I can stand the emotional gut punches of actually feeling my ticker even slightly being moved by the movies I was expecting to barf through. In any case, six down.

Up Next: Failure to Launch