50 First Dates

Drew Barrymore read George Wing's spec script, then titled Fifty First Kisses, and wrote Adam Sandler a letter proposing it as their next film after The Wedding Singer. Columbia bought it in October 2002, Sandler signed on in December and brought it to Peter Segal while the two were finishing Anger Management, which left Segal two days off before shooting. Sandler reworked the script from a drama into a comedy and moved it from Seattle to Hawaii; the claustrophobic café scenes were pushed outdoors to Kualoa Ranch. The studio changed the title because, Segal said, marketing found the word "kisses" was turning off guys. Most of the film was shot on Oahu in 2003, on the windward side and North Shore. The end credits are dedicated to Sandler's father, who died of lung cancer in September 2003.

Henry Roth (Sandler) is a marine veterinarian at Sea Life Park who only dates tourists until he meets Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore) building architecture out of waffles at the Hukilau Café. The next day she has no idea who he is: a car crash on the road home from a pineapple trip for her father's birthday has left her with a fictional condition called Goldfield's syndrome, and she wakes every day believing it is still the Sunday of the accident, with her father and steroid-addled brother (Sean Astin) re-staging the birthday daily to spare her. Henry's engineered "first" meetings on the road become the only thing that changes her routine; the tell is that she sings the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" in her studio only on days she has met him. When the charade collapses, he makes the Good Morning Lucy video that explains her life each morning, and the film ends with a new version of the tape, a boat among glaciers and a daughter. Rob Schneider's Ula and Allen Covert's Ten-Second Tom fill the margins.

It was a commercial success on mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes holds it at 45 percent, its consensus complaining that gross-out humor overwhelms the stars' easy chemistry, while audiences gave it an A-minus and Roger Ebert called it "ingratiating and lovable," an experiment in which Sandler shows his warm side and leaves the hostility behind. Sandler and Barrymore won the MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Team, and the soundtrack of reggae-style covers, produced by 311's Nick Hexum and closing on 311's version of The Cure's "Lovesong," topped the reggae and soundtrack charts.

Neurologists have had fun with it. A clinical neuropsychologist wrote in The BMJ that the film maintains the venerable movie tradition of an amnesia that bears no relation to any known condition. A Bronx nursing home later built a morning-video program for residents with early dementia and credited the film directly. Remakes followed in India, Japan, Iran, Mexico and Thailand, and a London stage musical ran in 2025.