Everything about this movie, with the exception of Drew Barrymore, screams for me to hate it. First, it was co-produced by and stars (if you'll allow me to use that word loosely) Adam Sandler, whose contributions to cinema are astoundingly forgettable. I find Sandler funniest when he's doing his humorous songs like the Chanukah Song and allows himself to laugh. His movie characters are always latently furious losers which you wouldn't expect to be a big box office draw, and yet there he is. Sandler is who he is; love him or hate him. I think I'm clear on which camp I fall in.
 Sandler's wingman in this movie is Rob Schneider, whose funniest character prior to this movie was the copier guy on Saturday Night Live. He starred (again, I'm sorry) in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and amazingly made money. That was enough for Hollywood which has since given him the green light for The Animal and The Hot Chick. These are capital crimes, and yet Schneider and Hollwood roam free. In Dates, he plays a half-blind native Hawaiian. No, I am not kidding.
Thirdly on my list of reasons to hate this movie, it's a romantic comedy. An admirable genre but not one I usually sit through willingly. Fourthly, it has the usual assortment of Sandler-esque bit characters: an ambiguously-gendered assistant, a four-hundred-pound Hawaiian with a tattoo running down his face, and an old man who appears everywhere and exists merely to quietly mutter obscenities and call Sandler names.
The plot is unbelievable and relies on that old Hollywood standard: amnesia. And lastly, Dates also stars Sean Astin as a latex-clad body builder who likes to show off his glutes. Yes, the same pudgy Astin who played Samwise Gamgee struts around in a painted-on body suit.
Despite these points, I actually enjoyed this movie, and for reasons I can't explain. I originally saw this in the theater, dragged to my seat by my wife. Seriously, I lost a few fingernails that night. I saw it again recently on cable and repeat viewings suggest I wasn't high that night in the theater, that Dates is actually a decent movie.
Sandler is occassionaly funny and, get this, so is Schneider. Barrymore is beautiful and charming as always. Astin plays her brother and adopts a lisp to match her real life one. I think it's small touches like that that separate this from other Sandler comedies. There was thought behind giving Astin a lisp, the writers didn't just say, "All right, he's got a lisp, because lisps are funny." There's also a scene on the golf course that pokes fun at Happy Gilmore.
My opinions of this movie are probably colored by how horrible I expected it to be, but who cares? I haven't liked a romantic comedy this much since Jerry Maguire, and that doesn't count because it cheats by having sports in it. Final grade: B-
Matt Baker is totally pussy-whipped.
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