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An interesting romantic film, slightly marred by casting and a careless script.
Adam Sandler plays Henry, a veterinary surgeon working in Hawaii. The holiday destination provides him with a regular supply of females for short-term romances. However he becomes captivated by a local girl, the winsome Lucy, played by Drew Barrymore. The attraction is mutual, but Lucy was badly injured in a road accident, and suffered brain damage: her short-term memory is wiped clean every night, so that the people she met yesterday are now strangers.
Henry perseveres with this difficulty, and doesn't exploit the obvious opportunity it offers, and with some weepy moments they make good progress.
Adam Sandler doesn't quite fit with the holiday Romeo image -- he was the meek victim in Anger Management -- and the script keeps lapsing into wisecracks which are amusing as one-liners but destroy the mood and the context.
There are three transgender elements; Henry's assistant at an aquarium is Alexa, a rather masculine looking woman played by Lusia Strus. When she suggests casual sex, Henry quips "I don't know if you realise -- I'm not into guys."
Later in the film, Henry concocts a method of bringing Lucy up to date, as it were, every morning; he prepares a video for her to watch of recent news events, and introducing himself. In it there is a re-enactment of their daily meetings at a restaurant; Henry's friend Ula (Rob Schneider) plays Lucy's part, with half-coconut breasts.
A little later, Lucy is meeting some of her old friends again; after greeting each one and commenting on their changes -- one is pregnant, another slimmer -- she goes on to say, "And I'm so glad that you finally got that gender re-assignment surgery, Jennifer -- I mean Jonathan."
Jennifer is played by Jonathan Loughran, who works as Sandler's personal assistant on film sets; he usually gets a small part in Sandler's films, though I think this is his first time as a female-to-male transsexual.
The film may also have been released as Fifty First Dates.
HF March 2005
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