The next day, however, Lucy hasn’t the slightest idea who this overly familiar guy is, and the reason why is quickly explained: The year before, she was injured in a car crash that wiped out her short-term memory. He breaks his own rule by becoming smitten with a local, Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore), whom he chats up in a beachside diner and who falls for him because he smells like fish. Unavoidably, however, it all comes back around to Sandler, whose Sea Life Park vet Henry Roth is presented in the opening reel as God’s gift to scrumptious female tourists who don’t want to leave Hawaii without having had a real good time. Pic features as many reaction shots of animals as an “Our Gang” comedy. In the middle are Lusia Strus’ campy pranks as Sandler’s sex-starved sea-park assistant of unknown gender affiliation, and aquatic creatures that perform cutely on cue but seem dragged in on a “when in doubt, cut to the penguin” basis. On the other, Sandler cohort Rob Schneider hams it up as a paunchy middle-aged Hawaiian stoner in an eyebrow-raising ethnic caricature that more than once calls to mind Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate Japanese turn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” On the one hand, Sean Astin wrings a string of laughs out of his resourceful clowning as Barrymore’s younger brother, a short, overcompensating muscleman who’s addicted to steroids and speaks with a lisp. In fact, the entire supporting cast is continually threatening to take over the movie, and this is not entirely a good thing. Initially hostile to the eager fellow’s annoying persistence, the ex-sailor and fisherman is played in a completely disarming turn by Blake Clark, whose imposing physicality, foghorn voice, withering glances and deep-down likability conjure up an unlikely but winning combination of John Wayne and William Demarest. But much of this interest stems from the alliance he eventually forges with her father.
In the end, there is something mildly beguiling about the spectacle of a lifelong commitment-phobe single-mindedly extending the limits of his imagination to break down this woman’s rather unique barrier. But that’s different from actually having to watch Sandler invent ever more extreme methods of attracting Barrymore’s favorable attention, ad infinitum, while trying to figure out a way to make her remember him. The premise of first-timer George Wing’s screenplay, in which a brain-damaged young woman wakes up every morning unable to remember what happened to her the day before, thereby requiring her ardent suitor to continually win her over afresh, seems potentially catchy on paper.
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