50 First Dates is a 2004 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Segal. The film stars Adam Sandler as a woman-chasing veterinarian and Drew Barrymore as an amnesiac, along with Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, Lusia Strus, Blake Clark, and Dan Aykroyd.
Plot[]
Henry Roth, a marine veterinarian at Sea Life Park Hawaii on Oahu, only dates tourists to avoid any serious commitments. His closest friends are Ula, a marijuana-smoking Islander; Alexa, his androgynous assistant; Willy, his pet African penguin; and Jocko, a walrus that lives at the park.
One day, Henry's boat breaks down, and while waiting for the Coast Guard at the Hukilau Café, he encounters art teacher Lucy Whitmore constructing architectural art with her waffles. 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.
But 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 the North Shore to pick a pineapple for 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 with anterograde 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's steroid-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 singing the 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 a ticket because of her expired license 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 in Bristol Bay to 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 new learned 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.
Cast[]
- Adam Sandler as Henry Roth, a marine veterinarian with a habit of wooing women and a fear of commitment.
- Drew Barrymore as Lucy Whitmore, Henry's love interest with short-term memory loss.
- Rob Schneider as Ula, Henry's marijuana-smoking, wealthy native Hawaiian assistant and best friend; who is unhappily married to an overweight native woman and has five young, athletically talented children.
- Sean Astin as Doug Whitmore, Lucy's older brother, a lisping, steroid-dependent bodybuilder.
- Blake Clark as Marlin Whitmore, Lucy's widowed father, a professional fisherman.
- Lusia Strus as Alexa, Henry's ambiguously gendered German assistant.
- Dan Aykroyd as Dr. Joseph Keats, a physician specializing in brain disorders.
- Amy Hill as Sue, the Hukilau café manager and friend of Lucy and her late mother.
- Pomaika'i Brown as Nick, the Hukilau café chef and Sue's husband.
- Allen Covert as Ten-Second Tom, a hospital patient with severe memory impairment.
- Missi Pyle as Noreen, a tax attorney Henry meets at a bar but then tries to fix up with Alexa.
- Maya Rudolph as Stacy, pregnant friend of Lucy's at the beach party.
- Lynn Collins as Linda
- Kevin James as Factory worker