The Sandler man-child actually has a job here, even playing a boss in Barry who sells toilet plungers and other novelty items out of a Silicon Valley warehouse in California. During his average work day he’s likely to get a call from most of his seven sisters, most frequently Elizabeth (Mary Lynn Rajskub) who is trying to organise one of the sisters’ birthday parties, getting Barry to come and meet her single co-worker Lena (Emily Watson). Barry has quite a day for such a lonely guy, witnessing a car crash, stealing or freebing a “small piano”, “accidentally” meeting Lena, breaking some plungers and windows and beginning a fix with a phone-sex hotline that now has his social security and credit card numbers. Lena talks of travelling, this time for business in Hawaii, Barry mentions how he’s never gone anywhere but will at the supermarket he compares Healthy Choice promotional barcodes for frequent flyer miles, eventually buying $4,000 worth of chocolate pudding for some one million flyer miles. Still Barry has money troubles with the phone-sex-runners, being Dean Trumbell, a mattress man in Utah who gets some brothers to go to Barry’s house to extort the money, one of his girls try to scam off Barry by calling him at home and work. What conspires is Barry taking action, going places, taking a first plane flight, inspired by possibly his first true love, a girl he was thankful for not showing at the earlier birthday party and is that harmonium Lena’s gift or did she catch Barry stealing it, cheaply. Taking inspiration from the true story of warehouse working, pudding-for-frequent flyers collector David Phillips, Anderson created the ultimate ‘art-house’ rom-com and Sandler flick, with references to him, this bows similarly to a Spielberg/Ophlus romance (2003’s The Terminal is this films okay-in-comparison cousin) even one of the French poetic realism of 65 years prior, it seems a further development of the Riley/cop-druggie relationship in Magnolia, even re-using his City Lights merry-go-line “So here we go”. At ninety-five minutes this maybe the shortest Anderson film we’ll ever see, his middle three films all have quiet scenes mixed with the wonderfully fast sequences that mix character and music, which make his films far better paced than his hero Robert Altman and more like one of his other favourites and one of the pantheon greats, Martin Scorsese. Emily Watson’s full enjoyment and sincerity in character makes up for her character being one of many females weakly written by Anderson, maybe his only down side, she (Lena) really does have a mirror life to Barry, mentioning that she was an only child which Barry thought would be “really, really great”, to which Lena replies “no it was terrible”, wishing she could have as many siblings as Barry, which makes the love story one of the greats of ‘opposites attracting’ or just colliding. This could be her best performance accentuated by the lushiest camera work which doesn’t shove the frame into her face like the misogynistic Lars von Trier did. Considered a surreal-fantasy sort of romance, this interesting analogy is largely down to Robert Elswit’s cinematography which seems only stellar in Anderson pictures (much like the Cuaron/Lubezki partnership). This is Sandler’s best performance, not his funniest (being Billy Madison), here he’s everything you are given in too-little-a-doses before and since, he would take his self-deprecating mad-capness further with his Bob-Dylan-vagabond performance in Reign Over Me. Guzman and Hoffman complete trebles with Anderson offering one, Lance a punch-drunk plunger-helper and two, the mattress man with Hoffman great as him in what are really a couple of swear-offs (he’s not really a villain like the great one Philip Seymour Hoffman delivered in Mission Impossible 3).
Jon Brion’s are nearly all brilliant, this remains his best, the prime example of Anderson’s quest for ‘bombastic’ atmospheric sounds (cheaply ripped-off in The Weather Man), Punch Drunk Love is the sort of score that gets you into movie scoring, it’s the most cheerfully romantic score you’ll ever here. Brion’s relationship with Aimee Mann (both in Magnolia soundtrack) is considered one of many inspirations Anderson wrote down, furthermore the score was played live on set which was a musical-directed sort of way that character and camera movement’s went so brilliantly with the music. One tone to pick up on is the anti-wit of some of the dialogue, deliberately delivered as bad puns, isolating the characters even more. The best way Sandler could branch out in the future is in support or in an ensemble, he’s always the centre of the attention, it seems he will in the upcoming Funny People, which may or may not continue Judd Apatow’s directorial run of above average comedies with bad titles, given the cast there is a small chance this could be an ensemble, more likely though that Sandler will have to work with Anderson or a great comedy-director like Edgar Wright or Spike Jonze to surprise us again. . Whether it was trying to deconstruct the modern rom-com, Punch Drunk Love offered quite possibly the best dynamite, that of characters the audience could love and laugh at, mostly full of surprises, the story is more than many about the illusion of love and without any cinematic similarities, is owed to the gayful films of the poetic realism team Marcel Carne & Jacques Prevert, in 21st Century 65mm colour anamorphic widescreen, beautiful. Curtis U. Lemmon |
|||
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of those big SNL fans, he probably thought of Adam Sandler in a feature he would be before Sandler’s own film-vehicles that have ranged from the goods ones like Billy Madison, Wedding Singer to the dreadful Waterboy and 50 First Dates. 2002’s Punch Drunk Love, Anderson coming off the high-drama and personal stress of Magnolia, and Sandler was never more annoying when his previous flick Little Nicky, but in his first film not directed by one of the “happy gilmores” Sandler finally shows his performance chops in a great script which was another Anderson rip-off yet improvement on a hero, Robert Altman’s script, this being 1979’s A Perfect Couple.
Only two Sandler films, Punch Drunk Love & Reign Over Me haven’t turned a profit, fitting given that some of his more thoughtful but failed-films like Spanglish & Click still made money, its this film as well as 2007’s most overlooked film Reign Over Me that show above all his ability to be humane/funny instead of insult/gross-out funny. Among the films many other serendipities are a reference to Spielberg, a script typo, Shelly Duvall singing and more of Anderson’s fascination with the sex-business (through shorts and first four films). The main reason Anderson’s look superior to his Altman templates are his ability to write redeemable characters and sentiment, probably the only factors they may hold a less enthused from re-watching this movie, its greatest value.
Post new comment