What The Film?! is a weekly column exclusive to Under The Gun Review that brings to light the plot holes Hollywood hoped you’d never notice. Written by comedy writer Dane Sager, this column shows no mercy to films that try and pull the proverbial wool over our eyes.

If you know a film with major plot holes that you feel needs to be exposed, tell us! Email utgjames@gmail.com with the subject “What The Film” and we’ll try to get your suggestion featured on the site.

This Week’s Movie: 50 First Dates

This Week’s Movie: 50 First Dates

I was originally going to do Halloween: Resurrection as my final Halloween What The Film!? but I decided to go with something else, something genuinely scary. A movie that once watched, it sits with you, keeping you up at night, leaving you afraid to fall asleep. No, this isn’t hyperbole, this isn’t any embellishment. 50 First Dates is the most frightening and scary movie I can possibly think of. And it isn’t because of 311’s awful cover of “Love Song” from the soundtrack

Now, you can take this movie and think of it as a stupid Adam Sandler movie, but it’s so much more than that. It has the traditional Adam Sandler comedy styling over a horrifying piece of psychological horror, with typical poop and fart jokes, Rob Schnieder playing a racist caricature, another being one of the most offensive transgendered characters put to film, but they only exist to hide the darkness lurking below the surface of this movie.

Adam Sandler plays Henry, a veterinarian working at a local aquarium who ends up pursuing a relationship with Lucy, a local on the island played by Drew Barrymore. The twist is that Lucy has a similar condition to Leonard from Memento, being that their short term memory doesn’t work properly. Due to a car accident she had a year ago, she’s developed severe brain damage, her memory gets wiped every night, making every day of her life the day after her accident. She assumes it’s October 30^th every day of her life, her father’s birthday.

Truly a master of horror

Lucy’s father and brother decide that the best course of action is to go along with this, and treat every day as if it were October 30^th, having a strict schedule, script, hundreds of copies of the same newspapers, tapes of news/football games, hiding the fact that she has had a horrible accident. The past year of her family’s life is reliving the same day over and over again. Her treatment is constant repetition.

Adam Sandler then spends several days trying to get Drew Barrymore to like him, each day trying something different, her being unaware that the same guy has been swinging and missing repeatedly. He keeps trying this day after day after day to woo this woman. In Memento, Leonard was aware of his condition, so he had a vague suspicion about being taken advantage of. Lucy isn’t aware of this. At this movie’s core, Adam Sandler is taking advantage of a disabled girl. That is literally the crux of the entire movie.

Pictured: Romance

Once Adam Sandler officially seduces her and they engage in “relations”. The next morning she discovers him in her bed and predictably loses her shit. Once she gets caught up to speed, he tells her that he plans to marry her and wants kids with her, the second most horrifying part of this movie. He devises a system where every morning Lucy wakes up and watches a video tape that catches her up to speed with her life. While this doesn’t cause her to remember anything, it gives her an idea of what to expect with her day, living another life that other people are telling her. The first time she watches this tape, she cries for over an hour. Her life is a complete mess, it’s a lie, it’s the most disturbing thing she could possibly do, and she does this every day. This is the most horrifying part of the movie: every day she wakes up is a day further from her yesterday. She wakes up and sees everyone she cares about grow old and age overnight. The anguish she experiences every day gets worse because it is worse every day. Can you imagine how painful this is for her and her family? Her daughter’s normality is knowing her mom doesn’t know who she is, but that makes it even scarier for Lucy. She’d be waking up pregnant one morning or giving birth despite not being pregnant prior. Eventually she would be waking up as an old woman despite the day prior being in her late twenties. This movie sits with you. It keeps you up at night and makes you afraid to go to sleep.

You just never know at what age you’ll wake up at.

Sleep well.

Dane occasionally forgets jokes he’s tweeted and tweets them later one! You can witness this by following him on Twitter and Tumblr!

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Dane Sager

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