Punch-Drunk Love

Give it a watch. It gives a great performance out of Adam Sandler and is a nice watch at the end of the day.

Another little weird film from PTA but great one. You can get in shoes of Adam Sandler in this one and understand his anger and conufusion. I love Adam Sandler in this role because he just showed he can act in serious roles and not just dumb comedy. Sequel to Punch Drunk Love : Adam Sandler goes to anger managment and Jack Nicholson cures his agressive behaviour.

We've come to expect a lot from Paul Thomas Anderson. After his twin masterpieces "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia", not to mention the sure-handed and satisfying "Hard Eight", we knew he was a filmmaker of skill and magic. So when it was announced that the next PTA film would be a 90-minute romantic comedy starring (Gasp!) Adam Sandler, I was, for one, not worried. This man had taken Mark Wahlberg and turned him into someone we could be proud to watch onscreen. He cast icon Tom Cruise, gave him the character of Frank "T.J." Mackey, and directed the actor to one of the most repulsive, offensive, and inspired performances of the "Top Gun" star's career. So, I was pretty confident in his ability to handle the star of "Little Nicky". But, boy, I still wasn't prepared for what I saw. Sandler just wasn't good, he was INCREDIBLE. I couldn't believe my eyes-here was the man behind "Eight Crazy Nights" creating a completely realized, utterly human character with a studied, nuanced performance. Many have commented on the fact that Barry Egan, Sandler's character, is not that different from his previous incarnations. Socially akward and prone to explosive violence, Barry might just be the key to explainging Sandler's Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore. The character helps shine a light on the inner torment of those man-children.

The plot is a bit more complicated than your usual romantic-comedy fair. First off, it's really not a comedy. Second off, the two major players-Sandler and Emily Watson as the beautiful and mysterious Lena Leonard-both have quirks and tension that ordinary movie characters who fall in love don't in movies today. Barry has been terribly scarred (perhaps irreperably) by the constant torment and abuse of his seven sisters. There are several scenes where he bursts into destructive rages for no real reason-to sum it up, this guy has problems. Lena seems to have some of the same hurt simmering under her, but she controls it and accepts Barry for who he is, eventually coming to a stage where she understands him better than anyone truly ever has. Much of "Punch-Drunk Love"'s story is how Egan manages to regain control of himself and experience truly human feelings for the first time. Lena is his salvation-through his devotion to her he saves himself.

The film's other specifics are a bizarre, but extremely original mix of details. Barry is a toilet-plunger salesman. He one day wanders onto a loophole in a snack-foods sponsored contest that would allow him to get enough frequent flier miles to never have to pay for a plane ticket again. First, however, is the nasty business with a small-time porn entrepeneur in Utah who is trying to extort a large sum of money from Barry, using the company's "Four Blonde Brothers" to threaten the (for a time) hapless Egan. The film is so utterly free that to reveal how these disparate elements come together would ruin the movie. Much of the joy of "Punch-Drunk Love" is that you never truly know where the movie is going to go next.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Philip Seymour Hoffman is "the heavy", but he puts a small line of tragedy in his character. Dean Trumbell seems fierce, but a telling look at his "empire" reveals he is all bark and no bite. The always-great Luis Guzman is Sandler's well-wishing co-worker, Lance, who is constantly supportive of Barry despite his doubts about what is really going on inside his boss's head. And Emily Watson is appropriately fascinating and quietly alluring as Lena, who drops her car off one day and admits the next she did it just to meet Barry.

The film might seem weird and violent, but this is truly one of the sweetest movies I have seen at a long time. At its core, "PDL" is decent, honest, and beautiful. It is reminiscent of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which, despite its rampant drug use and other disturbing subject matter, was a film that had a heart of gold. One of the best of 2002, "Punch-Drunk Love" will be seen in the future as a shining moment for all involved. Here's to hoping it will also be seen as the beginning of Adam Sandler's serious film career.

I must have seen this movie referenced a million times in the last few years for various reasons: - Look Sandler can act! - At last a love story that guys can watch. - The most underrated films of the… But it was the Top 100 movies of the 2000s so far list I read last week that tipped the scales and sent me to the shops.

Now I have a pretty simple formula (I think) for rating movies, same as most people. Charm, action, laughs, acting, plot etc are all in there and help me come to my conclusion, but the most important factor is did I actually like the damn thing? And in this case I didn't.

I don't care how clever a film thinks it is, how interwoven the characters are by the end of the film or the unlikely circumstances that bring them together in a supposedly "romantic" piece like this, if I don't like it I don't like it.

Now that I've said I don't like it I'm not going to leave it there, here is why: The primary character of Punch-Drunk Love, played by Sandler, is thoroughly unlikeable, offputting even, his name is Barry Egan. In real terms I would never choose to associate with this guy.

The reasons behind his psychological issues are never explained, but we do see at one point that he has 7 sisters who emotionally bully him and seem to have always done so. Barry seems very fragile, he is socially pathetic, prone to fits of violence, lies to others to their faces to protect himself and withdrawn.

Into his life comes a seemingly innocent and nice young woman named Lena played by Emily Watson. Why she takes a shine to Barry is also never explained and he immediately and constantly lies to her and makes rash decisions that sometimes turn out to be to her detriment. Oh and he also follows her to another timezone without notice. You might call it romantic, but when Barry is screaming and swearing at his sister from a Hawaiian payphone demanding she reveal where Lena is staying if I were Lena I probably wouldn't want to be located.

So once they get together I am supposed to be happy they found love? Yay, a violent social misfit with the tendency to solve everything with violence has scored with a fresh faced and friendly young woman.

F that.

If Barry managed to hook up with one of my female friends or relatives I would be horrified, regardless of how quirky he seemed or her plans to "change him".

If there was ever a sequel and they decided to commence PDL 2 immediately after the credits rolled in this, I can't help but feel that either a hospital or funeral scene would be happening for Lena within the first 10 minutes, after all there is no evidence that Barry changes one iota in this film, if anything his behaviour gets worse as the film goes along.

Other stuff happens in Punch-Drunk Love, and there are some pretty effective scenes at times so I can't honestly give it a horrible score, but when the central premise is so disgusting to me I don't care how good critics might say it is… A note that will never be read: To the director of Punch-Drunk Love, Wes Anderson, and for that matter the makers of Napoleon Dynamite and similar films.

Filling your film with unreal characters and then putting them in unreal situations and making them say unreal things and perform unreal acts isn't clever anymore.

It was never clever.

It was initially different and even a little amusing because it was fresh. Now it is just lazy. Based upon the diminishing returns of Nacho Libre, The Life Aquatic and Punch-Drunk Love, the public has quickly grown tired of your gimmicks.

Please try something different.

And you're damn right I just listed Punch-Drunk Love alongside Nacho Libre! Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. 95 minutes of well-made tediousness and a reprehensibly warped lead character. Punch-Drunk Love is shockingly over-rated.

Another thought: It is now two days since I watched Punch-Drunk Love and I was amazed at how p*ssed off I was with it once I started thinking about it later. Even now I am a little too wound up to be writing this in an unbiased manner, and I'm the guy that thinks Bad Santa and The Ref are funny stuff.

I was trying to think of the last film that enraged me for no tangible reason and it was just now, after I finished writing this that I realized it was Funny People last year.

Funny People of course starred… Adam Sandler! I don't especially hate Sandler and have no irrational (that I know of) reason to find disgust in his films (aside from Billy Madison for sucking arse), so perhaps this is a coincidence. I do find it a little weird that the two films that caused me to over-react in such a strongly negative manner feature the same guy, and for similar reasons: A guy we are supposed to feel sorry for being a horribly flawed person with precious few redeeming qualities.

No idea what this means, I just found it odd. But I still can't for the life of me understand why anyone can watch this and find entertainment value in it, let alone consider it one of the masterpieces of the last decade.

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Genre- _comedy/ romance_ I tried watching it twice earlier, but stopped at the 5 minute mark. I willed myself this time to overcome my initial inhibition and was rewarded by a stunning work by Sandler and by a truly original script by PT Anderson.

1. Amongst Sandler's most non Sandler like performances, right up there with his best non typical work such as _Uncut Gems_ & _Reign over me_.

2. Sandler is gutsy to have done this risky role, which requires him to be rage- prone, socially awkward romantic at such a youngish age, back in 2001.

3. Paul Thomas Anderson used to be a near genius, with classics such as _Magnolia, Boogie Nights, There will be Blood, Hard Eight_ etc. This early effort of his is right alongside his later gems.