The Flipcritic

When you think of Adam Sandler, you don’t think of thoughtful movies. He’s the last actor you’d think of casting in a Paul Thomas Anderson film (BOOGIE NIGHTS & MAGNOLIA). Yet here is in PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, often bleakly at the heart of this story, and at times literally in the center of the screen during contemplative moments. And shockingly… he is brilliant.

Yes, I had to think twice (thrice maybe) about my assessment of his performance. Maybe he was merely well behaved, and since he is never such, it might have magnified his act. But no. Any other actor in the same role would have received high marks. Which makes Sandler’s performance all the more remarkable. Here is a movie that reveals his lesser-known (if known at all) talents. He can evoke subtlety and provoke fearful rage. As noted film critic Roger Ebert observed, “Who would’ve known he had such uncharted depths?”

The movie is about a week in the life of Barry Egan, a lonely and depressed business owner (played by Sandler) who possesses sponge-like observation and an almost childlike inferiority complex. He also tries to please everybody, yet nobody seems to like him. A book I once saw which taught how to get rid of emotional leeches probably had Barry Egan in mind as a target audience.

As we see him go by his daily activities we realize that his deficiencies may have come about through his upbringing. We learn of his seven sisters, and those of whom we meet onscreen have absolutely nothing nice to say about him. One sister reminisces: “Do you remember when we were growing up and we kept on calling you gay-boy… and you threw a hammer threw the glass window?”

Barry’s loneliness and aggravation constantly ferment his inner rage, which he holds back for unreasonably long periods (but only barely). All of this changes when one day he meets a well-mannered executive named Lena Leonard (played by Emily Watson) and later discovers that she likes him enough to ask him out. His first reactions are guarded, but then go into positive transition as he slowly begins to need her. His good fortune ironically comes at a bad time, since he gets conned the night before by a phone-sex ring who contacted for conversation, but ends up with extortion with dangerous results.

The film is essentially divided into two phases. The first exposes Barry’s daily struggle to live life despite his disabilities. He may not be disabled in the physical sense, but his emotional framework is teetering on unstable. He is observant and intelligent enough to take advantage of financial situations (such as an error in printing free frequent-flier mileage which was based on fact), but his sisters intrude into his daily routine to no end. It hampers him so much that he can barely conduct business.

Two great sequences visualize his psychological instability. The first involves him calling a phone-sex line run by a porn-king/mattress-salesman played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (An Anderson favorite). He calls out of loneliness but not that of physical desire. The way Barry Egan is able to recall his credit-card number, social security id, phone number, and address by memory, shows that he has a savant-type quality. His desperation is evident in a long camera shot were he waits for the phone-sex operator to call back (which to my memory, lasted 15 full seconds). It’s a shot that shows his almost blinding attention, to which he can hardly call upon at work.

The second sequence happens to take place at work when his sister comes over to introduce Lena. He can hardly handle all the events that occur upon her introduction (e.g. a forklift accident, the phone-sex operator trying to call him repeatedly, his sister’s constant badgering, and Lena herself). In any other Sandler-film, this situation would have audiences laughing, with Sandler most likely exploding in rage. But Anderson is not so interested in the laughs, as he is with Barry Egan. He takes a look at the Sandler character in a new light, with all the familiar elements but with a more tender concern.

This tender but cautious tone comes more and more into the fore in the film’s second phase, where Lena almost miraculously begins to like Barry Egan. She asks him out, just as it seems nothing can go right with his day. When they go out on a date, and are kicked out of a restaurant (after Egan trashes the restroom), she acts as if it were part of the routine. She laughs at his jokes, but not at him. At one point she invites him to go to Hawaii with her. I wish I had more dates like her when I was younger.

At this point it becomes clear that she is the light of his life. And the scenes in which they resolve their conflicts towards the end of the movie are full of tension, fear, and sweetness (with some laughs along the way). These are not the type of emotions you would find in a sentimental film such as FORREST GUMP or A BEAUTIFUL MIND, but more of those you could relate to in somewhat odd films. One film that shows similar oddities and likeability is THE FISHER KING and maybe even EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. This is the kind of film that doesn’t uplift, but it does make you feel relieved and happy for those involved.

Paul Thomas Anderson is filmmaker who likes to capture characters that meet serendipitously, and to see what happens next. But he doesn’t concoct moments that seem fabricated or pompous for doing so pushes his characters to the edges of fiction. His moments are uniquely humorous and dangerous at the same time and he knows how to exploit Sandler’s comedic reputation and use it for dramatic and dangerous purposes.

It’s not only Sandler’s reputation he uses. Every character in the movie is well defined not so much because of character development, but of character association. Egan’s assistant Lance played by veteran character actor Luiz Guzman, has a treasure of… well… Luiz Guzman characters, making him easy to identify. The porn-king Dean Trumbell is as intense and dark as any of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s other characters. And Emily Watson, who seems to have a penchant as of late for portraying the love interest of bizarre characters (see RED DRAGON & EQUILIBRIUM), brings that same alluring strangeness for her character Lena. Anderson always seems to hinting that there is something more to her than meets the eye since we never find out why she likes Egan so much. But then again, this may be for the best since we would probably feel more pity for Egan if we did find out. To explain herself would be to limit herself.

Despite all of the movie’s sharp performances, this is Adam Sandler’s film. There is hardly any scene without him in it. He doesn’t ham it up here the way he usually does once he becomes emotional nitroglycerin. Treat him in the wrong way and he will blow up in your face. What’s so intriguing about PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE is that Egan is essentially like any other Sandler character, but shown lovingly and attentively. Here is a man that is crying out for help through his outbursts. I agree with Ebert when he says this may be the key to all Adam Sandler movies. Let’s hope his future ones will be all as good as this one.

Posted by FLIPCRITIC at June 24, 2003 12:00 AM