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# Review ‘50 Dates’with Sandler feels like 49 too many
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/review-50-dateswith-sandler-feels-like-49-too-many/
- Published: 2004-02-13T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:47:22.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Even the best Adam Sandler movies tend to be spasmodic, with sudden outbursts of high comedy interpolated into middling hooey as predictable as the presence of Rob Schneider doing his weirdo with a bizarre accent shtick. Of course, Sandler receives upwards of 20 million reasons per picture to dance with the modus operandi that brought him, and he does just that in “50 First Dates.” The film see-saws between laugh-out-loud-funny and downright stupid, with many of the highlights coming courtesy of Rob Schneider, who delivers — you guessed it — his weirdo with a bizarre accent shtick. “Dates” reunites Sandler with fellow Hollywood heavyweight Drew Barrymore. The cuddly duo displayed real chemistry in 1998’s “The Wedding Singer,” and it’s still intact here.

Sandler’s laid-back Hawaiian marine veterinarian Henry Roth is, inexplicably, the hottest catch on the island. The guy beds babes by the boatload, but — lest we regard him as nothing but a wolf in beach clothing — his womanizing ways come with unobjectionable validation. Turns out Henry plans to sail to Alaska to study the underwater activities of walruses, and there’s no way he’s going to allow any romantic entanglements to torpedo his dream. So he loves ‘em and leaves ‘em, and in between trysts tends to some anthropomorphic marine animals and plays golf with his best bud, Ula (Schneider), a wild-eyed islander and serial shark attack victim.

Love finds Henry at a diner in the form of Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore), a winsome schoolteacher given to making log cabins out of waffles and warbling Beach Boys ditties. They immediately hit it off, and make plans to meet again. But after Lucy fails to recognize him the very next day, Henry learns the truth: A car accident has robbed Lucy of her short-term memory and for over a year she’s been reliving the same day without recollection. It’s “Groundhog Day,” with an even more implausible twist. This reason-defying scenario puts our hero in the enviable position of having to repeatedly re-woo Drew. Eventually, however, the routine gets old (for him and for us), so Henry devises a farfetched plan designed to give permanency to their affair. At this point, the film hops aboard the Hokey Express, with direct service to Cornball. There are no stops, no getting off — and the best we can hope for is a little more Rob Schneider … and I can’t believe I just admitted that. (Rated PG-13 for crude sexual humor and drug references.)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/021304-11_01.jpg)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 13, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/021304.pdf?ref=smdp.com)