Other Titles • Punch-Drunk Love • Just Desserts (2001) • Punchdrunk Knuckle Love (2002) • Untitled P.T. Anderson Project (2001) • The X-4 Project (2001)
Synopses for Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
1.
Adam Sandler takes a shot at critical respectability with Punch-Drunk Love, a movie by director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Sandler plays Barry Egan, a lonely small businessman who calls a phone sex line one night, only to find himself the victim of an extortion scheme the next day--the very same day on which he goes out on a date with the woman who may be the love of his life (the utterly delightful Emily Watson). Barry is a lot like Sandler's popular comic characters--socially maladept, prone to violence, always on the brink of embarrassment--but here Sandler plays it real; the result is both off-putting and sympathetic. Anderson's writing skills, unfortunately, are not as strong as his visual sense. Punch-Drunk Love has many strengths (including great supporting actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzmán), but ultimately fizzles out. --Bret Fetzer
2.
Paul Thomas Anderson follows 1999's MAGNOLIA with the intensely compelling character study PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a quiet, shy, socially awkward man with an office in an out-of-the-way warehouse. He is dedicated to his job as a wholesale toilet plunger salesman, he keeps a nice apartment, and he is obsessed with special offers on grocery store products. Barry's latest fixation is on frequent flier miles included with the purchase of Healthy Choice foods. Barry wears a bright blue suit, though he doesn't know why. With seven outspoken sisters, Barry is constantly being nagged, questioned, and berated. He is challenged to explain the reasons for his actions, and it eventually becomes clear that Barry cannot control his often-violent impulses, a trait which is increasingly problematic. When a beautiful woman, Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), walks into his life with an instinctive attraction to him, a nonjudgmental attitude, and unconditional love, Barry undergoes a powerful transformation.
Anderson's film is a tour-de-force for which he garnered the Best Director award at Cannes 2002. Set primarily in Los Angeles and Utah, he shoots either bleak deserted spaces (apartment building hallways) or lush, exotic paradises (Hawaii). Aiming for a Technicolor look, the blue of Barry's suit in contrast with Lena's solid pinks, reds, and whites, pops off of the screen. Colorful interludes designed by visual artist Jeremy Blake offer hallucinogenic lapses from the action of the film, while the rapid percussive score by Jon Brion keeps the suspense and the emotional exasperation of the film on a constantly high level.
3.
Winner of the Best Director Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, “this misfit love story of disconnected people trying to find one an-other in an antagonistic world is a comedy of discomfort and rage that turns unexpectedly sweet and pure.” Adam Sandler gives an amazing and unusual performance as Barry Egan, a socially impaired owner of a small novelty business, who is dominated by seven sisters and is unlikely to find love unless it finds him. When a mysterious woman comes into his life, his emotions go haywire, fluctuating between uncontrollable rage, lust and self-doubt. “Punch-Drunk Love leaves you addled, a little dizzy and overcome by a pleasing, unplaceable sensation.” “A romantic comedy as wonderful as it is strange that expands the genre to its absurdist outer limits and makes us believe.” From the writer/director of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love is a dark, lovely and unique film experience.
4.
A 97-minute Paul Thomas Anderson picture, Punch-Drunk Love concentrates on a tight little story that might have made a subplot for earlier PTA epics such as Boogie Nights or Magnolia. Adam Sandler has a break-out art film lead not by abandoning his usual persona, but by playing his familiar man-child-out-of-control with far more depth than he has shown in Big Daddy.
Though prone to fits of terrifying rage, oddball entrepreneur Barry Egan (Sandler) is essentially sweet and timid, alternately nagged and cajoled by his seven sisters, and intent on exploiting a loophole in a supermarket promotion to convert piles of cheap puddings into unlimited free flights, though he has never actually been anywhere. Over the course of a day Barry enters into two unusual relationships: with a phone-sex girl (Ashley Clark) who runs a scam with "mattress man" (Philip Seymour Hoffman)--by getting Barry's credit card information and declaring a war of extortion--and with hesitant nice girl Lena (Emily Watson), whom he impulsively follows to Hawaii while trying desperately to seem more like a dedicated romantic than a psycho stalker. Anderson's trademark use of loud background music (including a Shelley Duvall track from Popeye) and obsessively repeated bits of dialogue and business make for a controlled film that still seems on the edge of madness. The result is magical, romantic, comic and creepy. --Kim Newman
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