If this assumption is broken, there is no way for Lucy to verify if she had really consented to all this, which is reminiscent of the ‘living-in-a-simulation’ problem. There is a very fundamental assumption here that if the Lucy of yesterday consented to all this, then the Lucy of today and all future days must also consent to it, since they do not ‘know’ of each other. It also raises doubts around consent for things that have permanency for more than a day and affect Lucy personally.įor example, towards the end we see that Henry has married her, and she has two children with him. This essentially means that Lucy will relive every single happy or sad ‘memory’ every single day, for the rest of her life. Say Lucy’s Father dies, so this ‘event’ will have to be added to the list of all the new ‘memories’ that Lucy goes through every morning. Unlike Groundhog, it is the person who is repeating the day who is unaware of it, while everyone else around them is.įirst, this means that, all the actions have real consequences. Personally, I think that 50 First dates raises far more interesting questions than Groundhog Day ever did.
When he tries to meet her the next day, he realizes that she has no recollection of him.Īfter further digging around he realizes that she has a mental condition that causes her brain to reset every day, unable to make any new memories.Īfter meeting Lucy’s Brother and Father, he finds out how she was in an accident that caused an injury, and how they must keep pretending that it’s that same day everyday for the rest of her life.Īfter making him aware of the extent of the charade they put up, he is asked to leave her alone.īut he’s still really in love with her, so he decides to make her fall in love with him every day. Henry is a Walrus researcher in Hawaii, who falls in love with a woman named Lucy at a diner. What matters though, is if the film truly develops the idea or simply uses it as just another plot device to spin out your usual rom-com. Featuring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, 50 First Dates is an interesting variation on the Groundhog Day trope.