And the wet-T-shirt contest winner is …

Drew Barrymore first came to our attention courtesy of Steven Spielberg. In “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” she was the cute little towhead whose initial reaction to the alien creature predated Macaulay Culkin’s open-mouth “Home Alone” expression so many years later. These days she portrays a kind of sexual image that is both alluring and girl-next-door. Both attributes are put to good use in “50 First Dates.”

You know the kind of film that “50 First Dates” is. You can describe it in two words: Adam Sandler. That’s not a criticism, merely a fact. The jokes make fun of girth (one of the comic characters is a Hawaiian local bigger than Warren Sapp ), sexual orientation (Sandler, who plays an aquarium’s veterinarian, has an assistant who is gender-challenged), ethnicity (perennial Sandler sidekick Rob Schneider portrays a sex-starved local), disability (one character, 10-minute Tom, can’t remember anything for more than 10 seconds) and sex itself (Schneider loves playing with his nipples).

What balances all this pre-teen poo-poo humor is Barrymore. She’s the sweet presence that keeps Sandler in check, making his character actually work toward being a mature presence capable of intimacy. And, yeah, she does do one wet-T-shirt scene . But just as she did in 1998, when she teamed up with Sandler to make “The Wedding Singer,” she manages to maintain her dignity no matter the situation — even when she is doing a Barry Bonds on Schneider’s character. It’s not the first, nor the only, time that we Barrymore fans do our own “Home Alone” impersonation.