DVD Review: 50 First Dates

It may seem ironic, but it's quite true: no romantic comedy speaks more truthfully about love than 50 First Dates, directed by Peter Segal. It seems very ironic that a sweet, yet goofy story about a notorious playboy, Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), meeting and falling in love with Lucy Whitmore (Drew Barrymore), a woman with brain damage, would speak honestly about the amount of work that love entails, but it does. So what happens when a notorious playboy, afraid of commitment, meets a woman whose brain damage does not permit her to remember him the next day? He commits himself to finding ways to meet her and convince her to fall in love with him every single day for the rest his life.

Henry Roth first meets Lucy Whitmore in a café. It's a well-crafted and magical moment. Blinded by a flash of light, Henry turns to find the source and sees an adorable woman playing with her knife at the table, which with every twist and turn, catches the suns rays. Henry makes his move, introduces himself, and they hit it off, conversing long into the start of the lunch hour. They set up a date to meet for breakfast at the café again the next morning, but Henry arrives to discover that Lucy has no memory of who he is or that they've ever met. That's when Henry learns that about a year ago Lucy received a traumatic head injury in a car accident which permanently damaged her brain's abilities to convert short-term memory into long term. In the words of Lucy's dearest friend and café owner, Sue (Amy Hill), "It's like her slate gets wiped clean every night."