Feature Review | Punch-Drunk Love
Written by: Brian Orndorf

How about a film concerning romance that actually gets love right? “Punch-Drunk Love,” while being the most unconventional and wildly bizarre film of the year, and possibly the first chance Adam Sandler will get some much needed respect, is a marvelous mini-masterpiece. It’s mysterious, lovely, hilarious, horrifying, dangerous, uncomfortable, and ultimately, hopeful. It is a challenge to watch, but the reward is another stunning ride with one of cinema’s most instinctive filmmakers, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a lonely, depressed business owner (he sells “Fungers,” or novelty plungers) who cannot break out of his downward spiral of self-loathing and periodic fits of ultra violence. Held down by considerable harassment from his seven sisters (including grand comedian Mary Lynn Rajskub), Barry is trying to find his way out of his hole, but has no one to turn to. Come one bright morning, a mysteriously abandoned harmonium, and a woman named Lena (a sweet Emily Watson) enter his life and begin to provide clarity and peacefulness in Barry. But Barry is hardly out of the woods yet; an innocent call made to a phone sex line in his darkest hour comes back to haunt him when the owner of the line (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) tries to extort money from him.

I can’t even begin to imagine how a legion of 15 year-old kids, who have spent long hours studying “Happy Gilmore” and “The Waterboy,” are going to react when they sit down to watch “Punch-Drunk Love.” While Adam Sandler is in the film, I wouldn’t call this an “Adam Sandler film.” Long gone is the absurdity, the boyish charm, the lowbrow gags, the overall Sandlerizing of the material. In “Love,” it’s replaced with an actual performance from the lovable doofus. Sandler’s Barry is an open sore, prone to fits of crying and uncontrollable rage. He’s a lovesick puppy who cannot communicate such powerful feelings to even those closest to him. Sandler isn’t a revelation here, as I’ve been a long time supporter of his work. Being wacky does take skill, and Sandler’s more mainstream efforts reflect a neighborhood good time quality that other films would (and should) kill for. No, Sandler here is just simply magnificent. Without any umbrellas of easy laughs to hide under, Sandler is left alone to simmer in this unstable character. And he manages to make you feel for Barry, and even root for him. Quite hard for a character that trashes restaurant bathrooms and puts his foot through a sliding glass door without much provocation. While Sandler should be considered amongst the best performers of the year, I’m positive he won’t be due to silly comedy prejudices. But for those lucky enough to see what Sandler creates in “Love,” you will be rewarded with a new appreciation for the comedian.

Taking a 180 degree turn away from his last opus, the brilliant 1999 downer “Magnolia,” Paul Thomas Anderson (“Sydney,” “Boogie Nights”) has decided to clean house and try something new for a change. While the characters are in a familiar constant state of despair, there is a newly dug (for PTA at least) stream of optimism and love running through “Punch-Drunk Love.” There are also moments of comedy to be enjoyed, and “Love,” at 90 minutes, could run twice in the time it took “Magnolia” to run once. But even with the purposeful change in tone, “Love” is unmistakably a PTA picture. Always a creative, risk-taking director, PTA doesn’t make movies, his movies make themselves. He provides the raw materials in cameras and characters, and the rest falls into place. For many people, this can be a frustrating experience, as his films tend to lack focus, and dare I say it, a point. But that’s missing the idea, and certainly the passion behind these films. PTA doesn’t really make strict narrative features, he makes chaotic emotional expeditions. And some times those journeys can be bummers. They can also be sexy, treacherous, and sometimes, as in “Love,” they can be splendid explorations of affection. Whatever the case may be, PTA is an innovator with his camera, his screenwriting, and his soundtracks (a restless and off the wall score is provided here by frequent collaborator John Brion). He endlessly excites with his experimentation and staging, and only something this dangerously optimistic, this wildly eccentric, and this painfully good could only come from his mind.

The moments that work best in “Punch-Drunk Love” are when PTA ratchets up the anxiety in his scenes so much that actually, it’s actually hard to breathe. You feel the anus-tightening tension whenever Barry is around one of his malicious sisters, with those years of torment leaving him raw and prone to disaster. Or the phone sex scenes, which get considerably more furious as the extortion gets deeper. Or take the moments of pure joy, like when Barry finds a loophole in a Healthy Choice pudding frequent flyer promotion, and proceeds to buy up all the pudding in his town so he can visit Lena on her Hawaiian business trip. Or even the best scene, which has the two oddly uncoordinated lovers trying out some pillow talk that is hilariously violent in its imagery. “Punch-Drunk Love” is such a menagerie of different rhythms and ideas (often simply culminating into bursts of color onscreen), that when PTA unearths a Shelley Duvall song (!) from the 1980 film “Popeye,” to underscore Barry’s trip to Hawaii, it seems to fit naturally into the grand design of this wild, untamed beast of a motion picture.

That’s why I adore this sweet and devastatingly honest little film so much. It’s messy for sure, but it hits all the right notes as it plays. And with a final summation that maybe love can help you through the difficult times in your life, how can you argue with that?

Grade: 10 out of 10