PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE ----------------
Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) runs his own novelty toilet plunger business in desolate L.A. garage space. One day, he witnesses a horrifying car accident, a harmonium is dumped on the sidewalk in front of him, his seven sisters harass him on the phone over a family birthday party and a pretty young woman, Lena (Emily Watson, "Gosford Park"), asks him to watch her car. Barry maintains a controlled exterior, bottled up in an electric blue suit, but privately boils over into violent rages. As Barry falls for Lena, who's inexplicably interested in him, and tangles with a blackmailing phone sex operator, he finds himself in "Punch-Drunk Love."
Paul Thomas Anderson follows up his magnum opus "Magnolia" with a short, quirky romance inspired by Adam Sandler fandom and the real life story of a man who bought 12,150 pudding cups to get 1 million airline miles. While the movie suffers from being episodic, it recognizes the Sandler persona in an oddly entertaining way and features a comedic tour de force performance from Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Sandler's characters have always been social misfits, awkward in their own bodies. Take away the funny voice and toilet humor, and what remains is the man you either love or hate from "The Waterboy" - an insecure yet strangely capable man yearning for love, bullied by family, who acts with bursts of violence. Anderson has Emily Watson love him here, and maybe some who've hated him before will at least come to more of an understanding.
We certainly understand Barry's weirdness after witnessing his borderline abuse and betrayal in the bosom of his family. When Lena turns out to be the same girl Barry's sister Elisabeth (Mary Lynn Rajskub, "Magnolia") has been trying to set him up with, Barry's romantic side must overcome suspicion. Lena laughs at Barry's nerdishly unfunny stories, but just as he warms up asks about an event that embarrasses him, told by a sister. He excuses himself and goes and 'beats up the bathroom.'
In the film's most inspired sequence, Lena phones to tell Barry she would have kissed him and he attempts to make his way back to her door through a barracks-like building of disorienting blank white walls adorned with tiny squares indicating apartment number directions. The pair is often shown in silhouette, like those framed paper cutouts from an earlier age, their upper bodies creating a cartoon heart. Anderson furthers the effect with the inspired choice of Shelley Duvall's rendition of "He Needs Me" from Altman's "Popeye."
Barry's given an obstacle to overcome in the form of Dean Trumbell, the D&D Mattress Guy and phone sex operator from Provo, Utah who sends four blonde brothers to shake Egan down. Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a blonde Elvis coif, turns a couple of verbal confrontations consisting of nyah-nyah level dialogue into high art.
Anderson shot "Punch-Drunk Love" quickly and it shows. Robert Elswit's photography alternates between murky and bleached out images. But Anderson and his editor Leslie Jones employ a fanciful effect of color swirled animation to bridge between scenes that adds a trippy quality, while Jon Brion's score is a brilliantly offbeat panache that sounds like sprung springs and backed up pipes.
"Punch-Drunk Love" is a little like a chocolate milk moustache - something playfully nourishing that leaves a goofy smile in its wake.
B
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