50 First Dates

February brings Valentine’s Day, and you know what that means! It means you better get a card for your sweetie or you’ll be in big trouble! It also means it’s time to cuddle up while watching a romantic movie (one that ends with a scene of a type of Jewish event you might have even been to!)
 
The sweet romantic comedy 50 First Dates is set in sunny Hawaii, which will help offset your Chicago winter blahs right away. Adam Sandler plays a zookeeper with a very funny walrus, a very strange assistant, and an even stranger problem.

You see, he has fallen in love with a woman, played by Drew Barrymore, who has a memory problem. After an accident, she can’t make any new memories! For Adam, this means he has to make a great “first” impression on her every time he meets her. It’s sort of the flipside of the movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray knows every day is a rerun but no one else does.

Adam’s friend is played by Rob Schneider, who is in most of his movies. Here, Rob plays a native Hawaiian who is really out to sea. Still, he is a very loyal friend and one of the sillier parts of the movie. Also, look for up-and-comer Maya Rudolph, from SNL and Shrek the Third.

Sean Astin plays Drew’s overprotective brother. You know him as Sam, Frodo’s friend in the Lord of the Rings movies. Recently, Sean was in Click with Adam, and he’s also been in 24. His other movies include Bulworth, The War of the Roses with Michael Douglas, Encino Man with Jewish comic Pauly Shore, and the body-switch comedy Like Father Like Son. When he was a kid, he was in an adventure comedy written by Steven Spielberg called The Goonies that was like Spy Kids crossed with Indiana Jones. Sean’s upcoming projects include two sports movies, a romantic comedy, and an animation about a cat who was raised in Dogtown… and has some identity issues!

Sean’s mom is Patty Duke, an Oscar-winning singer-actress popular in the 1950s and ’60s. She played Helen Keller both onstage and in the movie, and also had her own sitcom. She was briefly married to Sean’s dad, Michael Tell, who would become a major Jewish-newspaper publisher. Sadly, he didn’t see Sean much when he was a kid due to the break-up. The good news is, they did reconnect when Sean grew up, and now Sean goes to Seder at his dad’s place.

50 First Dates has a Jewish director, too, named Peter Segal. He directed Adam in two other movies, The Longest Yard and Anger Management. He also directed Tommy Boy and My Fellow Americans, plus two silly sequels, Nutty Professor II and Naked Gun 33 1/3. Peter’s next project is a movie version of the Bond-parody TV show, Get Smart, that was created by Mel Brooks.

After that, he’s directing a film called Shazam! about a superhero (created in 1939!) named Captain Marvel… who is really a boy until he says that word and turns into a superhero. The letters in the word “Shazam” all stand for different the mythological heroes that Captain Marvel has the powers of… all except the first letter, S, which stands for King Solomon and his wisdom! Yep, another connection between Jews and superheroes!