Punch-Drunk Love

I should point out that the summary above is not exactly "glowing" praise. PTA strikes me as both overly intellectual AND insufficiently challenging to be called a great artist or a brilliant filmmaker, but I confess that this film does a terrific job of highlighting the director's strengths. (He is pretty young, after all.) What PTA really seems to bring to his work is a sense of "compassion for the pathetic." While Boogie Nights was a feel-good hack-job in which it is difficult to care about ANY of the morons he depicts, and Magnolia was an overdrawn "angst" film in which the most natural response is to despise the characters, Punch Drunk Love did a reasonable job of making Barry Egan into a "real" person. He is pathetic, lovable, and unfulfilled through no fault of his own. I definitely got the impression that a good bit of the film was occupied by filler. The harmonium's introduction adds nothing, the color blocks are not presented in any coherent way, and the brief conversion of Egan into a superhero seems to be severely out of place. HOWEVER... This is a completely allegorical and poetic picture. The meaning of the film is very uplifting. Despite the numerous failures and flaws of our protagonist, there is a glimmer of hope that he might somehow find happiness--in fact, perhaps the entire story is about the first successful dating experience PTA had. Generally speaking, I'd rank Hard Eight above this one, but given that PTA lacked a great deal of directorial control over that film, I'd call this the best job that he personally has pulled off so far. More than anything, I appreciated the technical approach. The fact that almost every "rule" of cinematography and/or editing is broken repeatedly in this picture makes it pretty clear that it is not to be taken too literally. More filmmakers should jump at the chance to break the rules when it truly contributes to the structure and meaning of their work--I'd rather see the back of Sandler's head and non-literal interpretations of physical space in this kind of film than see a sterile and clinical "presentation" of the events depicted. 7 out of 10.

I have no clue as to why this movie was wildly praised. Well ... I take that back. I do have a clue as to why it was praised, but I just don't agree. I'll give it some points for being original and different. You don't quite know where it's going to go, and that's a good thing. I did find Sandler's character somewhat interesting. But there seems to be this school of thought nowadays among the critics and the art film crowd that as long as you put something on the screen that defies the standard conventions then you've made a great film. Well, I'm 100% for defying the predictable conventions. But it just isn't enough. You've also got to have a story. A movie should make some kind of statement; it should say something. It should mean something. That's where Punch Drunk Love fails. I took some ribbing from friends for giving an Adam Sandler movie a chance. In general a typical Adam Sandler movie would be something I wouldn't be caught dead watching. But this is no typical silly "Adam Sandler movie". In fact I thought Sandler did a rather good acting job. It's a bad movie simply because it's empty of meaningful content.