Psychological Film Review of “50 first dates”

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Psychological Film Review of “50 first dates”
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PSYCHOLOGICAL FILM REVIEW 2
Psychological Film Review of “50 first dates”
Good morning, Ladies, gentlemen, teachers, and my fellow students.
Today’s presentation is an outstanding event for all of us to discuss another
psychology topic. We are all thankful for our memory and how it defines our life as it enables
us to remember and recognize our language, family, friends, and the things we enjoy (David,
& Nathan, 2018). The film I will review today is the “50 first dates,” which is a romantic
comedy film directed by Peter Segal (Segal, 2004). The reason I am reviewing this film is
that it features the psychological concept of memory loss based on anterograde amnesia,
which is the inability to create new memories and the inability to recall a recent past.
The film “50 first dates” features a womanizing veteran called Henry Hoth who preys
on tourist women at Sea Life Park on Oahu (Segal, 2004). Henry has three close friends; Ula
who is an Islander and smokes marijuana, Alexa is his assistant whose gender is not revealed,
and Jocko who is a waitress, and Willy who is Henry’s pet penguin.
The story begins when Henry's boat breaks down, and he decides to go to a cafe
named Hukilau to wait for the coast guard. At the restaurant, Henry meets Lucy Whitmore,
and she's making architectural art with her waffle dish (Segal, 2004). Henry avoids
confronting her because she assumes that Lucy is a local, but the next morning he offers to
buy her breakfast. After having breakfast, Lucy asks Henry to meet her the next day.
After meeting the next day, Lucy shows no memory recollection of meeting Henry
even though she had requested him to meet her. After noticing the incident, the cafe owner
named Sue explains to Henry about the condition affecting Lucy. According to Sue, Lucy and
her father went to a pick a pineapple at North Shore for Lucy’s birthday on October 13th
(Segal, 2004). After picking the pineapple, Lucy and her father had a car accident after which
Lucy developed anterograde amnesia. After the accident, Lucy wakes up every day, thinking

PSYCHOLOGICAL FILM REVIEW 3
that the date is October 13th. Despite the warning by Sue, Henry insists on having breakfast
with Lucy, which ends up breaking her heart and a strict warning by her brother to leave her
alone (Segal, 2004). I now wish to present to you how anterograde amnesia is a psychological
condition and relate the case of Lucy in my explanation as it relates to the central theme of
memory.
Amnesia is a psychological condition in which an individual experiences a form of
memory loss. The causes of amnesia in the case of Lucy could have been traumatic head
injury after the car accident that caused damage to her head (Markowitsch et al. 2018). The
concussion of the brain could have been the result of her disruption of memory since the
accident (Markowitsch et al. 2018). On the other hand, anterograde is a term which explains
amnesia, and it involves the inability to remember information after its onset. This means that
anterograde amnesia in the case of Lucy is an inability to remember information or to
recreate new memories after an event that caused initial amnesia (Rizzello et al. 2020). It is
now clear that Lucy suffers from anterograde amnesia after the accident due to damages in
her brain, especially in areas of her hippocampus.
Another instance to prove that Lucy suffers from anterograde amnesia is when Henry
notices traffic police officers writing her a ticket because of her expired car plates. On this
day, Lucy argues that her car plates are not expired and tries to prove using that day's
newspaper (Segal, 2004). When Lucy notices that the date was not October 13th as she
thought, her brothers are forced to intervene and explain her condition to the police officers.
From this point, I will explain how anterograde amnesia is diagnosed and treated from
a psychological point of view. The first solution a therapist has is to focus on the underlying
cause of the condition (Cuncic, 2020). While there are no known treatment methods used to
treat this condition, some rehabilitation methods can be used even if the patient has