05 Dec 50 First Dates (2004)

Drew Draws

I’ve come to appreciate this actress. Women can do things in that space between the film and us that male actors just cannot. Blame it on the feminine nature or cultural imperatives, depending on your views. But there is no denying that the art is quite different for women.

Drew is not a particularly intelligent actress, nor one concerned with noteworthy projects. But she knows movies, she knows herself and she knows how do a few things in service to the projects she chooses.

And she does choose. These days she is a power in the business and can shape a project, even one initiated and controlled by Sandler.

In this case, she works with a simple notion that has depth: movies are never about life, always about other movies. Date movies especially refer to a particular world of love that was invented by movies — and only exists there. They are about memory. Each visit into a film is a new short term memory that we relate somehow to the frame of our larger lives.

In other words, this is a movie about movies pretending to be a love story comedy. It starts with an incongruous James Bond parody, but not a parody to us, rather to another character in the movie. And not just one girl, but many, each representing a genre. Check it out.

Then we have the performing animals. The constructions in the restaurant, the scenarios on the highway, the videos, the obsession of the brother with image, the art that is recreated every day.

All courtesy, it seems, of Flower Productions, her company.

The test audiences must not have liked all the stuff about the genius kids that was cut. Too bad. Also too bad about the product placement. A little too crass.

Posted in 2004

Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Folding

IMDB