If you’ve got a special someone in your life, recall the first time you met. For the sake of this example I’m going to assume that there were sparks right away, you were able to win over him/her and the rest is history. Now—bear with me here—what if you had to do it all over again the next day? Would you still be able to muster up the same charm? Would you still say all the right things? It probably wasn’t effortless to sweep him/her off his/her feet, was it? Or if it was, how do you know that the situation would unfold in exactly the same way on another day?
This is problem facing Henry Roth, played by Adam Sandler in the romantic comedy 50 First Dates. When we first meet Henry he’s a notorious one-night stander. He lives in Hawaii and gives attractive female tourists a romantic week they’ll never forget, then lies about his identity to ensure they won’t be able to find him again. But all that changes once he meets Lucy (Drew Barrymore). Suddenly he finds himself no longer interested in tourist girls because he can’t stop thinking about Lucy. The problem is…Lucy can’t help but stop thinking about Henry.
Ever since Memento made it big as an indie flick everyone had to see, Hollywood’s done what it does best and has found ways to rework what worked for a popular independent film to their own desires. Memento’s mesmerizing story of a man with no short-term memory has surely had a hand in shaping Dory’s character in Finding Nemo and now Lucy in 50 First Dates (there are probably a couple more, but I forgot them—ha ha.) Lucy was involved in a car accident over a year ago in which she lost her ability to create new memories, so every night while she sleeps her mind wipes clean and she starts again the next morning still believing it to be the morning before the accident occurred. She bumps into Henry on one such morning and both of them hit it off swimmingly and agree to meet up again the next day. Of course what Henry doesn’t realize is that the next morning Lucy is back one day behind him. After a rather confusing reunion and then getting “filled in” on Lucy’s situation, Henry decides to try to win over Lucy again…and finds that sparks don’t always fly twice.
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