50 First Dates
50 First Dates is a 2004 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Segal and starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, with Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, Lusia Strus, Blake Clark, and Dan Aykroyd in 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 in Oahu, Hawaii, on the Windward side and the North Shore. Sandler and Barrymore won an MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Team.
The film received mixed reviews but was a commercial success. It was later remade in India as Satyabhama and as Ormayundo Ee Mukham, in Japan as 50 First Kisses, in Iran as Chap dast, and in Mexico as Como si fuera la primera vez. The film marked the second collaboration between Sandler and Barrymore, after The Wedding Singer and before Blended. 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.
Plot
Dr. 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.
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 crash resulted in Lucy being diagnosed with Goldfield's syndrome, a fictional form of anterograde amnesia, whereby she remembers everything up until the night before the crash. 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 crash.
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-crash 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. He 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 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 anterograde amnesia.
- 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 Eastern European 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
- Sivuqaq as Jocko, a park walrus and one of Henry's animal friends.
Production
While the script is primarily credited to George Wing, Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel, Tim Herlihy, and Allen Covert did 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 from Seattle to Hawaii and 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 of My Dinner with Andre, encouraging Sandler to rewrite these and move the location to the Kualoa 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 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 in Kaneohe, Kaaawa, Wahiawa, Makapuu, Waimānalo, and Honolulu, as well as in Kāneohe Bay in 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 the studio zone, some interior scenes were shot on sets in Los Angeles decorated to look like they were in Hawaii.