Punch-Drunk Love

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very fragile, he is socially pathetic, prone to fits of violence, lies to others to their faces to protect himself and withdrawn.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.

I caught this at the New York film festival and my expectations were about as low as they could be. I was never a huge Adam Sandler fan, and I hadn't ever taken a liking to PT Anderson's other films. I thought that Magnolia was pretty flimsy writing-wise, and I also thought that it got way too much undue attention when it came out.

I couldn't believe how great Punch Drunk Love was. It seems to be the polar opposite of Magnolia. Where Magnolia was sprawling, messy and often generic, Punch Drunk Love is short, tight and completely fresh. It reminded me of Fargo, in a way. It centers on a very small cadre of characters, it's incredibly focused, and it creates its own world for those characters to live and move around in.

It's been mentioned here before, but the art direction is stunning. I haven't seen such memorable visuals since The Royal Tenenbaums. In a grocery store scene, the items are stacked vertically by color (echoing the color bars that appear periodically between scenes), making the scene appear otherworldly. Other sets are bare of color or distinction. Sandler's love interest in the film (played by Emily Watson) lives in a maze of white corridors. Somehow, every "place" in the film has its own character and association. Even the characters become associated with particular colors.

The movie ends up being genuinely romantic while deviating completely from the very stale paradigm for romantic comedies of the last decade: Watson's character pursues Barry Egan; their inability to hit it off from the start is more character-driven and psychological than situational. Through the use of bizarre props and surreal scenes, the anxiety and frustration of Barry Egan becomes totally absorbing and affecting.

This is a wonderfully directed film. There isn't an extraneous moment. The visual style and pacing are particularly great. There's an interesting subtext in the film about communication - enormous background noise while characters are on the phone, Barry Egan's sisters' voices create this wall of noise (all voices making fun of him), telephones figure predominantly, the opening scene is completely bereft of background noise or music. There are a lot of interesting things to consider when it comes to the theme of communication and how sound is handled in the film.

That said, I'm already cringing at how most people are going to react to this. The Adam Sandler fans might find it too weird. People who liked PT Anderson's other movies might find it too pretensious. I was thrilled to have my low expectations completely overturned. This movie is great.

While reading some of the other comments for this film I was initially baffled. I could not understand how anyone in their right mind would dislike, much less hate a movie as simple and beautiful as this.

Then it dawned on me.

Most people don't have the equipment to emphathize with real alienation. They're too happy, they're too normal, their lives and their relationships all worked out a little too easily.

Life for Barry hasn't been like that way at all. In fact he has as much trouble comprehending how normal life works as those with normal lives comprehend how easily it is for someone else's life to suck so bad.

Barry knows he's not doing things "right". But everytime he's reached out he's been rebuked harshly. He doesn't want to leave his apartment or his place of work. He hates visiting his sisters, going "out" to eat, or meeting new people. He's collecting up millions of frequent flyer miles because it's a good deal, but doesn't really see himself ever using them. Everytime he steps a millimeter out of his usual, safe routine it ends up horribly.

But Barry's hell doesn't end there. In addition to all this, no one will ever let him FORGET about any of it. He is continually reminded of everything by his family and all his actions are continually questioned and examined by outsiders so that, in his mind and in his experience, it will add to yet another story on the heap that he will never be allowed to forget. Whenever anyone asks him a personal question, or a question about his actions, he usually responds with the safe and evasive, "I don't know." Any other answer leaves him open to likely ridicule for the rest of his life.

Barry spends most of the movie, quite understandably, in a continual state of social paralysis, suffocating to death before our eyes.

And then eventually, a break comes. Naturally he's defensive, naturally he expects things to go horribly wrong, and that he'd never be able to live it down and be forced to remember every excruciating detail on through eternity. But it doesn't ... and eventually he let's himself go. He tells the truth. He opens up. He tells about the pudding, he admits to the phone-sex line. He becomes a bit less paralyzed.

Many people complain that the movie isn't believable because no woman would ever go out with this type of guy.

Well DUH. Of course not.

But the movie isn't about painting a realistic relationship. It isn't about whether a woman would actually go for a guy like him. Her background and her motivations are irrelevent. Accurately painting a fully-fleshed out love interest would be self-defeating. The more accurately painted she was, the less likely we'd EVER believe someone could fall in love with Barry.

The girl he meets is his dream-girl. She represents the idea that even the nuttiest, most repressed, most socially inept individuals deserve a chance at happiness. OF COURSE there'd really never be a person there for Barry, but far more important is the idea that she COULD exist. That somewhere she should exist.

The movie isn't about her, it's about Barry.

Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love is a fascinating film. Perhaps 2002's best movie - and one of the best drama/romantic-comedies to ever hit the silver screen.

PT Anderson is an absolute genius. A talented and master film-maker. Boogie Nights and Magnolia, two of Anderson's previous films, were absolutely stunning. Boogie Nights, in particular, was a complete masterpiece. And Punch-Drunk Love is no exception, another great piece of film-making by what is quickly becoming one of the world's top Directors. I can't wait for whatever he does next.

Also, it's difficult to overstate the performance of Adam Sandler. I'm confident this will go down in history as his best work. Ironically, I thought I'd never see this movie because of Sandler starring in it. (I ONLY watched it because of my respect for PT Anderson - and I still waited 3 years to see it!). I enjoy most of Sandler's non-romantic comedies, but I couldn't even imagine him in a romantic movie, I thought he would be horrible. I couldn't have been more wrong. I wasn't prepared for such a great performance, as he stole the show from the opening scene. I can't remember ever being more surprised with the lead actor in a movie. He was simply great, a truly terrific performance.

On the flip side, Emily Watson, as the caring Lena, was wonderful as well. I've got the feeling we will be seeing much more of her, as she had a breakout performance here in PDL. I thought at first that she almost looked too beautiful to put up with the antics of someone like Sandler's character (as she would be in high demand with the males), but then we see the quirky side of her as well, and it all comes together. Great touch.

I recommend this movie to anyone over the age of 25. If you're a teenager who's hoping for a few laughs from Sandler, you're going to be gravely disappointed. Buy the movie, store it in your closet, and pull it out when you reach 30 - and you'll love it! And please, don't let "romantic comedy" scare you (as it does me). I almost REFUSE to watch romantic comedies, but this one is much different. Romance and comedy surely aren't the first things that come to mind when I think of this film. It's a drama full of tension and embarrassment. It's an uplifting, yet shocking movie. To the intellectual mind, I can't recommend it enough.

Thank you for reading!...

JD