50 First Dates Psychology

In the movie 50 First Dates, Lucy Whitmore, portrayed by Drew Barrymore, is an art teacher that suffers from anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is a loss of the ability to create memories after the event that caused amnesia has occurred. Because of this, Lucy only remembers things that occurred prior to her misfortunate car accident. For example, her father and brother go out of their way to reassure Lucy that the day is October 13, 2002, so that she does not suffer from the shocking truth of her condition. Therefore, Lucy goes through life thinking that everyday is October 13th of 2002, until she meets Henry Roth, played by Adam Sandler. Altogether, Henry falls in love with Lucy and lives his life explaining to her every morning about the car crash and her present life with him and their son.

As described in our psychology book, amnesia is the loss of memory. However, in Lucy's case she simply has the loss of memory AFTER her accident, which is the meaning of anterograde amnesia. I believe that the movie did a fine job of portraying the life
of a sufferer of anterograde amnesia. Showing how she goes through daily routines, such as eating breakfast, celebrating her father's birthday, re-painting her garage and so on expresses the seriousness of this disorder. While showing her daily rituals to keep order in her life, the movie also does a good job of expressing Lucy's distress when she realizes that the day is not in fact October 13 of 2002. Altogether, I feel that the movie did a fine job of displaying the life of a person diagnosed with anterograde amnesia.

Today I’m going to analyze a movie that’s a bit older, and my first “romantic comedy” film – 50 First Dates, starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The basic plot of the film revolves around Barrymore’s character, who has a form of amnesia that the film describes as “loss of her short-term memory.” As a result, her memory only lasts one day; as soon as she falls asleep, her brain “reboots” back to the day the amnesia began. Sandler’s character falls for her, but must continually introduce himself over and over, thus making each of their “dates” their “first date,” essentially. So, what about this movie is valid, and what is total Hollywood hogwash? Let’s start with the hogwash.

In terms of psychology, some parts of the film are simply not accurate portrayals of amnesia.
First, Barrymore’s character has a brother and a father who look after her every day and spend their lives helping her live the delusion that time has stopped. They go through elaborate schemes to “trick” her into avoiding the reality of her condition. Most amnesia patients don’t have this luxury, or family members who can stop their own lives to devote all of their time exclusively to the patient.

Second, Barrymore’s character supposedly has a form of amnesia called “Goldfield’s Syndrome.” This is totally made up by, apparently, the film’s writers and/or director. There’s no such thing as Goldfield’s Syndrome. The fake term annoys me, as there really is a form of amnesia that exactly matches Barrymore’s character. So why didn’t they just call her condition what it’s really called, which would be “anterograde
amnesia”

As mentioned above, there really is a condition called “anterograde amnesia” which pretty closely matches the situation portrayed in the film. With anterograde amnesia, it’s typically caused when a person has some kind of brain damage, most often to the hippocampus region (a portion of the brain at least partially responsible for the storage of memory). In the film, Barrymore’s character has permanent brain damage due to a car accident. When people have this condition, they really are, essentially, “stuck in time.” Their brains are able to encode new memories and store those memories, but the memories are made inaccessible to that person. In other words, the person doesn’t realize that the memories exist. He or she will perpetually believe that it’s the day when the amnesia started, just like in the film.