Starring: Adam Sandler (I), Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin

5 out of 10 stars

Adam Sandler comedies sneak up on you every year. You turn around and suddenly he's back, like that overflowing junk drawer in your kitchen, where you keep the screwdrivers, flashlights, batteries, coupons, and paper clips. Didn't you just sort that thing out? Didn't we just have an Adam Sandler comedy?

50 First Dates presents us with the task of sorting through the comedian's usual ragtag selection of bits that make up his movies though there's less to sift for here than usual for a Sandler feature. There are the things you expect to see from his films, that you always see: the old man/woman sexual innuendo bit, the over-the-top gross bit (here, a vomiting walrus), the bizarre sexual side comments from a secondary character, broad slapstick and lots of retro `80s stuff (done to death in the funnier The Wedding Singer). Some of his standard tricks aren't here. There's no playground hijinks or discussing some kid from the fourth grade. It's not overly sentimental. It is not, thank God, animated.

The script, by first-timer George Wing crafts an imaginative third act that rises above the earlier two and, since it's Sandler, it's impossible to assign the early, painful first half-hour to Wing; it's the classic, lazy hallmarks of the "SNL" graduate.

Commitment-phobe Henry Roth (Sandler) meets Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore) in a café and they instantly hit it off. They promise to meet for breakfast again the next day and when they do Lucy acts as if she's never met him. That's because Lucy, we come to find out, suffered a trauma which caused her to lose all of her short-term memories. She has total recall up to the day of the accident but can't make new memories. Her father (Blake Clark) and brother Doug (Sean Astin--ouch, Sean) keep up the charade that it's the same day, the Sunday of her accident, over and over again. Thus Henry, who falls in love with Lucy, has to win her over every day of his life.

There's a lingering sense that in the original script that a part of the trauma was the loss of Lucy's mother in the accident, which would help to explain a little, but that probably didn't test well with audiences. What must have tested well, as we seem to get little inserts of him is Rob Schneider as Ula, Henry's buddy.

What is rather sad about 50 is that director Peter Segal, who also made last year's equally uneven Anger Management, is allowed to waste Sandler all over again (and make money doing it, creating some virtuous cycle from the fetid maw of Hollywood Hell). Someone, and it certainly doesn't seem to be the director's he's hand-picking, needs to sit on Sandler and make him work; because he's amazing when he works. Most great comedians, and Sandler is a great comedian, never get the kind of opportunity that was Punch-Drunk Love. And now Sandler is high-fiving walruses.

What happened? Did he forget it? The question that 50 First Dates ultimately asks is, "Who has the memory problem?"