PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE is a 2002 film starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. This follows the bizarre Barry Egan, a novelty toilet-plunger salesman who finds himself caught in love with his sister’s co-worker and that's only the surface.
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Adam Sandler stars as Barry Egan, as aforementioned. His performance can only be considered a remarkable flair, a once in Sandler’s lifetime performance as it will sadly never be seen again. He plays his role as a frustrated dead-end worker perfectly for what is intended in the film and it is astonishing. It shows purely that Adam Sandler can act, but chooses not to. The late Roger Ebert put it quite simply at the film’s release: “He can’t go on making those moronic comedies forever, can he?” The answer to that supposedly rhetorical question being yes.
Emily Watson and the also late Philip Seymour Hoffman co-star, as Barry’s love interest and antagonist respectively. Both in contrasting roles and therefore both exceptional for contrasting reasons. Watson is charming, unassuming and bizarrely understanding of Barry, proving the age old saying that opposites attract. She is understated in her role, and ultimately brings to her character that less is more. Hoffman however, is over the top in every conceivable manner in the best way possible. Sleazy, just as the business he runs and at one point in a shouting and very explicit verbal battle with Barry, seeing him on screen brings an uncomfortable feeling also.
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, it is a delightfully quirky script with absurd dialogue passed around as if it is common place and uncharacteristic set pieces involving a crash and broken windows aplenty. It feels almost fairy tale, or if it set in its own fictional world where faces and broken language do the talking instead of the conventional niceties that we are accustomed to in the real world. It is difficult to explain, but easy to understand. An unnerving tone throughout the script and direction keeps you oddly on the edge of your seat and sometimes cringing away from the screen, traits not typically seen in a romantic comedy. It’s a P.T.A. film through and through. Adding onto the direction and that ever so distinct unnerving tone, characters move and act in a very specific way, as if his vision has come to fruition just as he wanted, the mark of a great director, you look at one frame of this film and you can tell what it is.
Score is by Jon Brion, once a regular with Anderson and later providing incredible scores on forthcoming films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York. This may just be his best work, as when you think of this film in addition to the frame, you think of the score. Repetitive and at a constant unease with high-pitched world beat instruments, it creates a sound that is astoundingly unique and completes the silly world that is Punch-Drunk Love.
Overall, Punch-Drunk Love on the surface doesn't sound like a romantic comedy, or a good one at that. It isn't. It’s more than that, the showcase of a usually limited actor, a twist on a tired and balding genre, a wonderfully personal stamp on cinema. Punch-Drunk Love is that.
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| "You can go places in the world with pudding... that's funny." |
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