Punch Drunk Love

Released 2002
Stars Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, Mary Lynn Rajskub
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

In "Punch-Drunk Love," Sandler plays Barry Egan, an executive in a company with a product line of novelty toiletries. Barry has seven sisters, who are all on his case at every moment, and he desperately wishes they would stop invading his privacy, ordering him around and putting him down. He tries at a family gathering to be congenial and friendly, but we can see the tension in his smiling lips and darting eyes, and suddenly he explodes, kicking out the glass patio doors.

In the Paul Thomas Anderson universe, people meet through serendipity and need, not because they are fulfilling their plot assignments. Barry meets Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a sweet executive with intently focused eyes, who asks him to look after her broken-down car and later goes out on a dinner date with him. They like each other right away. During the dinner he gets up from his table, goes to the men's room and in a blind rage breaks everything he can. "Your hand is bleeding," she gently observes, and after they are thrown out of the restaurant, she carries on as if the evening is still normal.

I feel liberated in films where I have absolutely no idea what will happen next. Lena and Barry are odd enough that anything could happen in their relationship. A face-to-face meeting with the Utah porn king (Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman) and another meeting with the four blond brothers are equally unpredictable. And always there is Barry's quick, terrifying anger, a time bomb ticking away beneath every scene.

Summary by  Roger Ebert

This is one bizarre flick--much more so than Paul Thomas Anderson's previous ones (Hard Eight, Magnolia, and Boogie Nights). It's completely unpredictable as the pathetic, mentally ill, Barry (Adam Sandler) maneuvers through his first love, a violent porn scam, and, scariest of all, seven meddling sisters. I enjoyed this movie for its characters and unpredictability, but it seemed to only be half there. It gives us the setup for a character study, but it's more of a character observation. We observe how Barry reacts to his skewed world, but we don't discover what's happening in his mind. I assume he's at least manic-depressive and possibly psychotic, but we never find out. He's actually a cross between two of Sandler's previous characters, Happy Gilmore and the waterboy, and it's a compliment for Sandler and writer/director Anderson that the character maintains our sympathies throughout the film--even when he tells Lena (Emily Watson), "I love you so much I want to smash your face in with a sledgehammer." It's a frightening moment because we have no idea how far Barry's going to go, but then Lena responds, "I love you so much I want to scoop your eyeballs out of their sockets and chew and suck on them." These two were made for each other, but what happened to Lena to damage her so? This is a good, unique film, but it would have been truly great if the characters had been fleshed out more. --Bill Alward, July 14, 2003