"Punch-Drunk" and Loving Life by Homer Yen (c) 2002
I've been endeared to Adam Sandler's childlike giddiness and his dimension of edginess from his days on Saturday Night Live. But when he left the world of 3-minute skits for the world of 2-hour films, it seemed that the Hollywood-filmmaking-powers-that-be could not create the proper recipe to carry over his sardonic spirit onto the big screen. While his film's characters didn't really change, which centered on either the sardonic jerk or dimwitted boob, his work seemed empty. His efforts seemed to suggest nothing purposeful.
But despite that admission, Adam Sandler fans, including myself, have been some of the most devoted and everlastingly loyal fans that a celebrity can hope for. These are the kinds of people that adore you whether you put out high quality material or work that is spectacularly mediocre. His higher quality output, however, has been missing from his cinematic contributions. That is, until now.
Much of the credit for this goes to writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose is not only considered one of Hollywood's leading storytellers, but is also a great fan of Adam Sandler. And in "Punch Drunk Love," he tells a great story about the power of love using a character that Sandler knows how to play best. Again, we see him as the vaguely familiar sardonic jerk and dimwitted boob. But, this time, there is purpose and depth, and Anderson has found a way to focus and to sustain it.
Sandler plays Barry Egan, a man with many disturbing issues that manifests itself, at times, into uncontrollably violent urges. Perhaps, these feelings stem from a sense of worthlessness, for he had a less-than-ideal upbringing in the shadow of his seven domineering and nosy sisters. Now, he has become somewhat isolated from the outside world. He has only one or two friends, is not comfortable around women (he can't even conceive the protocols of a 900-sex line), and is focusing his free time on buying pudding because their marketing campaign affords him with outrageous amounts of frequent flyer miles. However, when he feels exposed, he erupts.
A strange musical score accentuates his odd existence. It is music reminiscent of carnivals and the circus. Meanwhile, Sandler looks continually jittery and unbalanced, reminding us of a trapeze artist afraid to make his swing for he is working without a net. His approach to such problems is to simply ignore, dismiss, and run away.
But his life begins to change for the better after two separate events. He meets Lena (Emily Watson) who seems to accept him as a responsible man and ignores his foibles. And he makes the mistake of giving out his personal information to a scam artist (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Two important forces are starting to add juice to his otherwise bland life, love and revenge.
There are some great visual images that arise from this such as Barry's courageous decision to leave the serenity of his workplace and to board a plane to join Lena in Hawaii. You'll particularly like the image of Barry walking down the jetway to board his plane. And, you'll appreciate just how his relationship helps him to finally deal with the scam artist. "I have so much love in me that you have no idea how strong I am," he proclaims. The scam artist can do nothing but respect him. And in much the same way, we'll have an equal amount of admiration for this film.
Grade: A-
S: 1 out of 3 L: 3 out of 3 V: 1 out of 3
========== X-RAMR-ID: 33174 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 801288 X-RT-TitleID: 1117428 X-RT-AuthorID: 1370 X-RT-RatingText: A-
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews