Peter Segal
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Once again, the union trumps the fragile concept, “borrowed” from 1993’s “Groundhog Day.”
What follows is a blatant rip-off from Groundhog Day as the smitten Roth is forced to woo his love afresh each day, at the same time winning over her suspicious fisherman father and steroid-crazy brother.
Groundhog Day dealt with similar themes and still managed to be hilarious.
The plot -- it's inspired and ridiculous at the same time -- is best described as "Groundhog Day" meets "Memento."
Directed by Peter Segal ("Anger Management") from a script by George Wing, it's a skewed cross between "Memento" and "Groundhog Day." Problem is: Adam Sandler's no Bill Murray.
Essentially Groundhog Day and Memento with the cast of The Wedding Singer, this is a sweet-natured romcom with some good gags and a lovely performance by Drew Barrymore.
The 2004 romantic-comedy “50 First Dates” plunged into this very theme, yet obviously that film was meant to emphasize how cute and romantic this situation could be.
In a twist that will probably have any neuropsychiatrists in the audience tsk-tsking to themselves, this already "atypical" case of anterograde amnesia — the kind that inspired Christopher Nolan's brilliant "Memento" as well as the brain-dead rom-com "50 First Dates" — also erased years of her life from before the accident, including her marriage.
From the stylish mysteries of Hitchcock's Spellbound to the art-house thrills of Memento , the horrors of Angel Heart, the sci-fi experiments of Total Recall , the tragicomic heartbreak of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , and even the goofy romance of 50 First Dates , memory – or the lack of it – has provided a nifty plot device for a dazzling array of cinematic crowd-pleasers.
Since we’re not that lucky, the film’s rancidness lingers, especially when you start comparing it to similarly themed flicks like “Memento” and “50 First Dates.”
The 10-year-old comedy 50 First Dates is notable for only two reasons: it was the last time Adam Sandler was arguably funny, and it was the first time anyone made up this particularly stupid form of amnesia, in which the subject loses their memory every time they fall asleep.
The story, I do not know if it is faithful to the novel or not, is merely a dramatic “50 First Dates” with lots of twists – not many believable – that propel the film to its confrontational conclusion.
Yes, that should remind you of “50 First Dates,” and yes, that should tug at your heart anyway.
Many questions and apologies ensue, akin to a Nicholas Sparks movie somehow not based on a Nicholas Sparks novel or 50 First Dates stripped of its awful jokes, leaving only corny gestures and sporadically convincing heartache intact.
Writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, two of the folks you can blame for Valentine's Day , attempt to put a serious spin on 50 First Dates , while director and co-writer Michael Sucsy (HBO's Grey Gardens ) attempts to bring a yuppie catalog to life.
But it might have been adapted from the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore comedy "50 First Dates," or made up by somebody's boyfriend as an excuse for why he forgot Valentine's Day.
If the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore chuckler "50 First Dates" had been recast as a romantic drama and produced by the Oprah Winfrey Network, "The Vow" might have been the result.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
influenced by Get Smart (2008)
Plot Themes
Hidden behind a suit-shop storefront on Savile Row, Kingsman HQ are accessed through a series of “Get Smart”-style secret doors and tunnels, while the group itself is presided over by an old blue blood played by Michael Caine.
Yet if we were to say what “Kingsman” most resembles, it would be the old TV show “Get Smart,” which was conceived as a Bond satire in the mid-1960s.
There are the Bond homages, of course (not least being a dagger-adorned shoe not unlike the one sported by Lotte Lenya in From Russia with Love), but other espionage sagas also factor into play, from a throwaway gag line invoking TV's Get Smart to the casting of Caine — Cold War spy Harry Palmer in three 1960s thrillers — in a key role.
A subpar spoof on '60s spy films clothed in dazzling, if not migraine-inducing, visuals, Kingsman is a cross between a James Bond film and a Marvel superhero comic, with a nod to Dr. No, Our Man Flint, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Get Smart.
There are also unsubtle references to The Avengers (the '60s TV series not the Marvel movie) and even (would you believe?) Get Smart.
The Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy "50 First Dates" is the latest in a recent spate of films ("Memento," "Finding Nemo") dealing with the concept of short-term memory loss--the new amnesia, it seems.
The plot -- it's inspired and ridiculous at the same time -- is best described as "Groundhog Day" meets "Memento."
Directed by Peter Segal ("Anger Management") from a script by George Wing, it's a skewed cross between "Memento" and "Groundhog Day." Problem is: Adam Sandler's no Bill Murray.
Essentially Groundhog Day and Memento with the cast of The Wedding Singer, this is a sweet-natured romcom with some good gags and a lovely performance by Drew Barrymore.
Lucy has the movie version of short-term memory loss -- like Guy Pearce in Memento, she can't retain new memories.
“50 First Dates” answers a question that has been plaguing movie buffs for the last three years… What if Christopher Nolan’s dark and gritty thriller “Memento” was actually a sweet romantic comedy?
Glass (2019)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
influenced by Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)
Characters
Stripped of the surrounding darkness of that magnitude, McAvoy’s emoting this time around feels more hammy, more akin to watching Eddie Murphy don the disguises in such low-rent efforts as Norbit and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps .
It’s a pretty standard comedic premise, in a similar vein to other recent spy spoofs such as Johnny English and Get Smart — the one major difference being that Cooper is actually fairly good at her new job.
The film follows the tried a true spook spoof that worked for Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in “Get Smart” pretty much from beginning to end.
Actually, that’s one of the few interesting things that happens in “Spy,” a cookie-cutter caper comedy that’s as dumb as the “Get Smart” movie.
If you like this, try: “Get Smart,” “Bridesmaids,” and “The Heat”…
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
Directed by George Miller
influenced Anger Management (2003)
Characters
More often, Nicholson recalls the Devil in The Witches of Eastwick, alternating velvet swagger, super-avuncular glee, and eye-narrowing menace.
Even Jack Nicholson appears defanged when you compare him with his craziest work in films like The Shining, or mediocre comedies that he's appeared in, such as The Witches of Eastwick.
It's fun to see Sandler sputter, simmer and explode while Nicholson remains eerily calm and composed, speaking in the same diabolically mellow tone of voice he used so effectively when he was wooing Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment" and seducing Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Witches of Eastwick."
Jack Nicholson puts a wicked-looking spin on Buddy that reminds of his horny little devil in "The Witches of Eastwick" and Jack Torrance in "The Shining."
He may have already played the devil once, in The Witches of Eastwick, but now that he's a few years older, he looks even more impish and demonic as the puppet-master pulling Sandler's strings.
From his blazingly pissed-off general in A Few Good Men to the psycho in The Shining and the devil himself in The Witches of Eastwick, Nicholson's anger is beautiful and terrible to watch, partly because it's rarely righteous.
Borrowing little more than character names and Jerry Goldsmith’s sleek musical theme from the original series, which ran from 1964-68 on NBC, Ritchie’s film is a surprising exception among so many recent classic-TV adaptations in that it doesn’t ironically parody its own source material (the way “Get Smart” and “21 Jump Street” did).
…never quite went the route of the spy spoof Get Smart (although the third season could get awfully campy, a side effect of the Batman craze), it offered enough of a wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude to make even the playful 007 flicks look as serious-minded as The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by comparison.
Ritchie wants to have it both ways, to make James Bond and "Get Smart."
Unlike the overtly satiric “Get Smart,” “U.N.C.L.E.” (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) took a dry, tongue-in-cheek approach to international spying.
First, I love the idea that rather then merely stealing the name of the mid-’60s TV show and updating it to the present day (as has been done with Get Smart and Mission: Impossible), co-writer/director Guy Ritchie keeps U.N.C.L.E.
Not every 15 minutes like Guy Pearce did, but at the start of every morning like Dana Carvey suffered in Clean Slate some 8 years ago.
(It's a cut above Clean Slate.) Henry Roth (Sandler) is a Hawaiian veterinarian who spends much of his free time seducing female tourists.
It made us want to take back anything mean we’ve said about “Tron: Legacy,” which looks impeccable compared to the effects here.
What should be an immediate thrill for the viewer instead makes for a jarring watch, with the digital Stallone and De Niro suffering from the uncanny valley syndrome that plagued the younger Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy .
A kind of cross between Groundhog Day and Theres Something About Mary (and lets not forget that 1987 Bruce Willis classic, Blind Date) thats set in Hawaii, Peter Segals 50 First Dates moves from the Oedipal preoccupations of his Anger Management to those old T.S. Eliot mind teasers memory and desire.
Ray is now super-strong and has the power to immediately rejuvenate, sort of like the cyborg in “Terminator 2.” Ah, but he’s lost his memory and he’s forced to keep on living the same day (with certain variations) over and over again, like Drew Barrymore in “50 First Dates.”
The movie tries to mix the buddy-movie feel of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the raunch-fest of a Farrelly Brothers movie, and the psychological twists of thrillers like The Game.
Dorfman and Segal recognize that, ultimately, they're making an Adam Sandler film, and not "After Hours" or "The Game," two better films that "Anger Management" calls to mind.
"Anger Management" is "Punch-Drunk's" Barry Egan and "The Witches of Eastwick's" Daryl Van Horne thrown into a second-rate cross of "The Game" and a photo negative of "What About Bob?"
The worst of it is that in order to facilitate Sandler's milk-fed vision of the controversy-less world of the privileged male, Anger Management concludes with the revelation that the whole thing was, in fact, an elaborate fiction along the lines of Fincher's The Game--a conceit that in this context speaks nothing of cinematic deconstruction and everything of an irredeemable disdain for the intelligence and expectations of its audience.
Though the film isn't in the same league as the latter (not much is, really), 50 First Dates is notable in that it combines the off-the-wall humor of films like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison with surprisingly dramatic moments.
As if to jog our own memories with in-jokes, Sandler also references a character�s Happy Gilmore-like golf swing as the most ridiculous he�s ever seen and performs a subdued "hahahaha...shutup" from Billy Madison on a nosey customer.
When Segel decides to give the penguin and the walrus a break, he rolls out the old people who swear and adorable moppets--50 First Dates is an example of how to turn what was probably an ambitious script into a star vehicle, catering to Sandler's fans by referencing Happy Gilmore and catering to Sandler himself by giving Rob Schneider a large role that continues Sandler's disturbing propensity in all of his films to demean every imaginable Asian target (Schneider himself guilty once before as the voice of an Asian waiter in Eight Crazy Nights).
Unfortunately, it often gets derailed by not-so-subtle hints of things we would find in an "Adam Sandler movie," by which I mean Happy Gilmore, Mr. Deeds, The Waterboy, and the other entries in the comedian's traditional ouvre.
For the most part, just as Runaway Bride tried to recapture the wonderful chemistry that existed between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, 50 First Dates sees Sandler and Drew Barrymore attempt to rekindle the onscreen romantic connection they shared in The Wedding Singer.
From the start, the franchise was a funny send-up of new and old, proper and not: Savile Row propiety cut with street-bred wit and gratuitous parkour, 007 suavity buttressed by affectionate self-ridicule à la Get Smart.
For the most part, just as Runaway Bride tried to recapture the wonderful chemistry that existed between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, 50 First Dates sees Sandler and Drew Barrymore attempt to rekindle the onscreen romantic connection they shared in The Wedding Singer.
Though the film isn't in the same league as the latter (not much is, really), 50 First Dates is notable in that it combines the off-the-wall humor of films like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison with surprisingly dramatic moments.
As if to jog our own memories with in-jokes, Sandler also references a character�s Happy Gilmore-like golf swing as the most ridiculous he�s ever seen and performs a subdued "hahahaha...shutup" from Billy Madison on a nosey customer.
Some of his earlier works like “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore” were by no means great films but were at least entertaining for the Adam Sandler fan.
His character has no mental deficiency (see The Waterboy or Billy Madison or Little Nicky) and actually seems like a decent guy, even if he does have a habit of having one night stands and creating elaborate ruses to not have to leave his phone number.
In the end, the Sandler fans who rally around Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison will probably be disappointed, but those who bask in the lighter side of The Wedding Singer and Punch-Drunk Love will find a minor treasure.
In the immortal words of a kid from Billy Madison, 50 First Dates is most assuredly “retarded or something.”
Ray has his client surrender and go to jail, which turns out to look at lot like Adam Sandler’s remake of “The Longest Yard.”