Punch-Drunk
Love: See It SoberPunch-Drunk
Love: See It SoberPunch-Drunk Love (now in select theaters in select cities) reminds me of Good Will Hunting from five years ago. That film was an early critic's favorite, having garnered buzz at various film festivals and from a small release in only a few markets. The first reviews from New York and L.A. read like studio ad promotions. The media could find no wrong with the flick, and Oscar momentum was building for its young screenwriting team of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and for a restrained supporting performance turned in by Robin Williams as a grieving professor who tutors a young genius in matters of the heart.
By the time, the film reached its secondary release into markets like Washington, Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, critics were still impressed ... but they had heard too much too early about its "brilliance." Suddenly, what was a "masterpiece" in early reviews suddenly became just a "great" movie in the secondary markets. But audiences turned out in droves, and Damon and Affleck's stars shot through the stratosphere. By the time the film crossed the $100-million mark, garnered multiple awards, and Mary Hart and Steve Kmetko were referring to the movie's two young stars as "Matt and Ben," film purists--failed screenwriters, mostly--were walking by the Good Will Hunting poster and giving it the finger while grumbling expletives.
For weeks now, I have heard that Adam Sandler has given an Oscar-worthy acting performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. Imagine that. Happy Gilmore ... Oscar-worthy! A funny thing has happened, though, as Punch-Drunk Love has made its way to more and more cities across the country. Critics are still giving it positive reviews, but now they are writing phrases like "but don't look for it come Oscar season" or "great performance by Sandler ... but not that great."
What's getting lost in all this jockeying for award buzz is the fact that this is just a really good movie. Sandler truly has delivered the goods here in a serious performance as a man who has suffered years of abuse at the hands of his seven domineering sisters. In the role of Barry, the former Saturday Night Live goof gets to show a whole new palette of character traits. Barry is alternately scared, henpecked, lonesome, even obsessive. And Sandler nails all of these quirks. There are many young actors who could have pulled off this character, but few could have given Barry the kind of wounded sweetness that Sandler brings to him. And not the played-up sweetness of a Billy Madison or a Mr. Deeds. In Sandler's hands, Barry becomes a real person. And if you can accept the fact that you are watching a character and not an actor, you will come to care about what happens to this guy as his life takes one strange turn after another.
I give a lot of credit to Sandler, but I give even more to writer-director Anderson, the filmmaker behind the great Boogie Nights and Magnolia films. Anderson likes to blend the absurd with the everyday, the exaggerated with the understated in his films. Most importantly, he is an outstanding director of talent. No one does a better job in today's Hollywood of getting actors on the same page. He knows exactly what he wants out of his cast, and he gets it every single time out.
Now, you're not always sure in a Paul Thomas Anderson film what is coming next. Sometimes their plots make little sense. The characters seem to come in and out of focus. I personally like this style of storytelling. In Punch-Drunk Love, we get a sly, odd romance between Barry and the somewhat underwritten Lena (Emily Watson). But we also get hijinks with a phone-sex operator and her abusive boss (Anderson film-regular Philip Seymour Hoffman) and bits involving novelty toilet plungers and obsessive pudding coupon clipping. Anderson gets to a point in his wacky, kaleidoscopic stories where he can introduce just about any element, and it will make some kind of weird P.T. Anderson sense.
Frogs anyone?
That said, I hope the boat has not been missed on the release of this unusual and highly entertaining film. Adam Sandler is a major box office star, and I think a lot of his fans would show up for this challenging film if it did receive the full, multiplex treatment. It's not as dark as Jim Carrey's turn in The Cable Guy. If anything, Sandler plays a variation on the same misunderstood, angry romantic he has always played. But here he plays it straight. This is a movie that needs big box office to keep it in the mainstream over the next few weeks.
I harken back to The Wedding Singer, which until now was Sandler's best work. I didn't see that movie until it had been out for a few months in the theaters. I was impressed by how the studio stuck with that movie, kept it in the public eye while it turned a BIG profit. I saw it in what must have been the thirtieth theater in a 30-screen multiplex. It wasn't even a theater really, but a glorified janitor's closet and AMC was showing the film on some guy's forehead. Regardless, the sound was good, and I drove home that night surprised by how endearing Opera Man from Saturday Night Live could be as the romantic lead in a silly, yet heartfelt comedy. Years later, it's nice to have punch-drunk love for such a performance and such a flick again.
Punch-Drunk Love is rated R for strong language and naughty sexual dialogue. This film will be rolling out to even more theaters this Friday, Oct. 25. Unlike Anderson's other films, this one isn't a three-hour opus. Punch-Drunk Love clocks in at a lean, well-paced 89 minutes.
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