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An unexpected knockout
[Photo: Columbia Pictures]
At long last love? Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, right) hopes his bad luck with women has changed when he meets the mysterious Lena Leonard (Emily Watson) in Punch-Drunk Love. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 24, 2002
Punch-Drunk Love reveals subtleties not typical of its director and star; the tension between actuality and expectation created makes the head swim.
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Punch-Drunk Love is a cinematic curio from an artist known for working in film murals. Paul Thomas Anderson's style is usually bold, expansive and three hours long: the kinetic, sordid porn family of Boogie Nights, or the crushing, intimate coincidences that could make frogs rain down in Magnolia.
Anderson's style in Punch-Drunk Love seems self-consciously small, as if to prove to viewers who couldn't make it through Magnolia -- a tough task -- that he can make a brisk, amiably shallow movie. No great revelations of morality or destiny, just a simple tale of a simple life, briefly complicated for minor dramatic effect, and redeemed by the simplest, purest savior: true love.
That's a slight notion around which to build a story, resulting in a film so slight that its strengths may slip by even the most attentive moviegoers. Anderson's fans will recognize little here. The editing is, by his standards, conventional. The surreal touches are either too oblique to matter or overly obvious (his psychedelic segues between chapters, for example). By the end of Punch-Drunk Love, some viewers will wonder if that's all there is, and for many it won't be enough.
Punch-Drunk Love is an interesting success. Not only for the way Anderson subdues his style, but also the way he handles Adam Sandler in the lead role of Barry Egan, a hapless guy not far removed from the goofy louts Sandler has made a fortune playing. Punch-Drunk Love is essentially a drama, yet Sandler's performance isn't a grand reversal of talent, as was Jim Carrey's in The Truman Show.
Instead, Barry Egan arises from a focused director's reconsidering an actor's persona, then reworking it into something that urges the audience to do the same. Sandler gives a typical Sandler performance, muttering his dialogue and playing disingenuously coy, with an aggressive streak ready to burst into slapstick at any moment. Punch-Drunk Love offers a real character's rationale for those affectations. It's the role those of us who believe Sandler can be a fine actor probably didn't believe could be written.
Barry's introduction is the first test of our patience. He's working at dawn in a bland warehouse district selling bathroom novelties, and not very well. The early morning silence is shattered by an auto accident and -- possibly related to the crash, but how? -- a van deposits an antique musical instrument, a harmonium, on the street. Some other bystander, and some other movie, can worry about the accident. Barry's tuneless life is about to change.
He meets a woman named Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), who seems equally neurotic. She drops off her car for repairs at another warehouse and Barry waits eagerly for her return, without a clue about what he'll do then. He doesn't deal well with women, the result of his shrewish sisters, who constantly berate their only brother.
Barry's social disconnection, evoked by Anderson's shot selections and Robert Elswit's cinematography, leads to an experiment with phone sex that doesn't work, either. Before long, Barry knows that his seducer is also a shyster, threatening to expose him as a pervert if he stops paying.
Then there's Barry's obsession to get away from all these problems, using a loophole in a grocery promotional plan that swaps frequent-flyer miles for proof-of-purchase seals. Pudding cups provide the best rate of exchange, so Barry goes on a mission to collect every carton he can. Lena's going to Hawaii. Maybe Barry can get there, too.
[Photo: Columbia Pictures]
Lance (Luis Guzman) glowers at Barry (Adam Sandler) as they make their way down a supermarket aisle in Punch-Drunk Love, a creditable film that is the sum of many seemingly unrelated parts.
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Revealing how these segments of Barry's life dovetail would be a shame. Anderson is very deliberate about interlocking his jumbled puzzle. Punch-Drunk Love doesn't have thematic crescendos, and the big pay-off scene is handled so matter-of-factly that it barely registers, except perhaps among viewers who care enough to search their memories for it.
What Anderson's film does possess is a sense of casual weirdness unlike anything we've seen from him before. This is a film that could be tougher, or mushier, or sillier, but Anderson remains steady on a tilted tightrope between our expectations and an artist's flop. He leaves us feeling more punch-drunk than in love, wondering what hit us. Or maybe we should have ducked.
Punch-Drunk Love
- Grade: B+
- Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
- Cast: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman
- Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson
- Rating: R; profanity, sexual situations
- Running time: 89 min.
- Opening Friday: Veterans 24 and Starlight 20 in Tampa, Regency 20 in Brandon, Woodlands Square 20 in Oldsmar and BayWalk 20 in St. Petersburg. Opens in wider release Nov. 1.
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