Ten Statements About....FIFTY FIRST DATES (2004)

Some sights...simply cannot be unseen...

"How is the cow?"

"Same as you. Every morning they have to convince her she's a cow.""

1) The thing that has always struck me about this film is even though it tries so hard to convince you this is a fun romantic comedy, there's something truly horrifying about it. As decent as director Peter Segal is as a stylist, he never gets away from what a sad existence so many of these characters have. It's like the flipside of Groundhog Day recast as a Kafka-esque nightmare.

2) There is a strange sort of disconnect in this script and its treatment of the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler chemistry. The reason the chemistry was there in The Wedding Singer was because Sandler was in his 'serious actor mode' as opposed to his 'angry man child mode.' While Sandler is playing it straight for the most part here, there are these elements thrown in to appeal to his fans that lessens his character...so while the chemistry is still there, it's muted and obscured somewhat.

3) Make no bones about it--unlike The Wedding Singer, this is first and foremost an Adam Sandler film. All you have to do is look at the inclusion of all the grotesques in the cast--the hemophroditic Russian woman, the shark-obsessed, one-eyed handiman played by Rob Schnieder in his usual lack-of-talent style...hell, the film even trots out an uncredited Missi Pyle to suck a snifter bowl of liquor dry with a straw. Even though Barrymore apparently discovered the script, it's Sandler driving this project.

4) And while we're on the subject...boy, if you work on a Sandler project and he likes you, you're set for life. Do these guys who were in The Waterboy get work anywhere else?

Yeah, I remember when you sang for Drew in that other film,
too, Adam....

5) I am really curious to see George Wing's original script, as I suspect it was a lot more darker and didn't cater to its stars with a slew of throwbacks to The Wedding Singer--some of which, like the song 'Forgetful Lucy,' doesn't make a lick of sense in the context of this film.

6) I'll admit it--I think Blake Clark and Dan Ackroyd were very effective, mainly because they play their characters straight. That makes the laugh lines they do get all the more effective because you believe in the characters. Clark in particular is very good conveying the world weariness of Lucy's father, as well as the relief when Henry proves himself to be a positive element in his daughter's life.

7) That being said...there are times when all of the characters, including Clark's Marlin, behave in ways that only characters in a movie behaves like. As funny as the moment where Henry is singing along to a CD of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice,' a present from Marlin, while alternately crying and cursing the older man (which is, come to think of it, a throwback to 'Somebody Kill Me' from The Wedding Singer), the only reason it exists is so that there can be a big 'she remembers me' moment. Why Marlin doesn't just call Henry the second he realizes this and drags him over to the Institute is beyond me.

8) You know what, movie? You're not fooling me by giving all those 80's songs to modern singers to perform for the soundtrack. We know what earlier movie you're trying to remind us of.

9) The thing about Drew Barrymore is that she's not gorgeous, or even really beautiful...but she has a certain charm and all-around friendliness about her that makes her attractive...which may very well be why her romantic pairing with Sandler works whereas other attempts to pair off Sandler (Brooklyn Dekker? Fairuza Balik? Salma Hayek? Really, Mr. Sander? Really?) fall flat. These are not two impossibly gorgeous people here--these are two normal folks you can believe see things in each other other people don't.

Yep, it's a walrus...because it's not a Sandler movie without
jokes about sea animal genetalia...

10) Unlike with Forgetting Sarah Marshall--rewatching the former compelled me to rewatch this film--this film's Hawaiian setting could be changed up with any coastal city. It's Hawaii only to provide beautiful backdrops, and the setting is not used to illuminate the characters in the least.

Overall...a romcom that is hamstrung by two things--the general core horrific nature of Lucy's condition, and the way it doesn't want you to forget the previous, far superior film that teamed the two leads. Even with a couple of nice grace notes and performances, it's prolly not worth the over ninety minutes we're asked to spend watching it.

Ten Statements About....YOU, AGAIN? (2010)

Yeah, I'd be crying if I was caught in Romcom Hell, too, Kristen...

1) Poor Kristin. Poor, poor Kristin. Although it's obvious she knows she needs out of this romcom spiral she's in judging from her campaigning to get a Veronica Mars movie going (and for the record, I did not pay for this--I used my free admittance slip from Machete).

2) This is one of those films that follows 'The Script' so closely that it doesn't bother to, you know, give any of these characters any character. Bell's Marti and Odette Yustman's Joanna seem to have jumped immediately from high school to the weekend this film takes in, and that's more than any of the other characters get.

3) This is also one of these films that is built on a co-incidence so back-breaking its not funny--okay, I could have accepted that Yustman and James Wolk's Will never met in high school...if he wasn't the star basketball player while she was the head cheerleader. There's no way they couldn't have met!

Betty White gloats over the face she has the best career
of all the people in this picture....

4) Two thing that just Aren't Funny Any More are Kids With Smart Mouths and Grannies With The Hots For Anything That Moves...and we get both! Thanks, Movie Gods!!!

5) I have never, ever seen a film so clearly demarcate its acts in a long time...to the point where you can see the exact moment when everyone has to stop acting like petulant madwomen and start bonding. And the way the script hewes so tightly to that three act structure produces a film where everyone, but everyone acts like a monster that until it's time for the message section of the film.

Dear Hollywood...this is how you cast people to be family members

6) It's really, really weird that Yustman and Sigourney Weaver's Ramona look more like mother and daughter than Bell and Jamie Lee Curtis' Gail...and Yustman and Weaver are supposed to be aunt and niece. The sad fact is that Bell's movie family looks exactly like a mismatched bunch of actors thrown together for name value.

7) It's also weird--although prolly their skills as actresses rather than the strength of the script or the characters provided them--that the film's message about how it's the sum of all your experiences that make you who you are, even the bad ones is driven home much, much better by Weaver and Curtis than by Bell and Yustman.

8) Oddly enough...the few moments of grace come from the smaller roles, especially the slightly-larger-than-a-cameo appearance of Dwayne Johnson as a federal marshall who gives Bell some good advice, and especially Kristen Chenoweth playing the too-fabulous wedding planner. On the other hand, Kyle Bornheimer's Tim is truly irritating, and the cameos by Patrick Duffy and Cloris Leachman are lazy and rely solely on the audience recognizing them as the actors and not the characters.

9) ...and speaking of lazy...this is one of those pictures where, when you see Kristin accidentally spills her lunch on Sean Wing's Charlie, you know that he is The Designated Love Interest--even when he has less than twenty minutes of screen time, and doesn't have a single scene of more than five lines with her.

A reminder...THIS is the only reason I saw this film...this,
and the fact that my free movie pass was expiring that weekend...

10) Boy, does John Oats look even goofier without the mustache.

In short--one of those bad, bad movies that walks The RomCom Script like a prom date trying to prove he's not drunk to a highway patrolman...and thus doesn't realize they've created unlikable, unsympathetic characters behaving like lunatics. But at least Kristin Bell looked cute in her Nike Dri-Fit top and sweatpants in Act Two (Not so much the sweats in Act Three that keep slouching around her hips)

Incidentally, the trailers were similarly terrible--the worst of which was Gnomeo and Juliet, a version of the Shakespeare classic played out by garden gnomes that was so hideously ill-conceived my mouth hung open, and yet another showing of that abominable looking Life As We Know It trailer that just reinforces how unappealing the two 'appealing' leads are, and does the trailer script of handing us a two to five minute summary of the film from beginning to end. I should prolly also mention Burlesque, a backstage melodrama that's being sold as a vehicle for Christina Aguilara and features Bell as her frenemy...but the sight of Cher's overtly-plasticed body still scares me.