When I first heard that director Paul Thomas Anderson (BOOGIE NIGHTS, MAGNOLIA) was doing a romantic comedy with Adam Sandler (HAPPY GILMORE, WEDDING SINGER) I thought, oh God, Anderson is selling out? What I wasn't taking into account was that Anderson is brilliant and he saw something in Adam Sandler films that I never did.
The story follows Sander's Barry Egan, an executive at a novelty toiletries company. He struggles to overcome his emotional problems, which stem from the intrusive presence of his seven hen-pecking sisters. When Barry feels trapped, he erupts in uncontrollable fits of anger. His problems make it hard for him to hold down a relationship with his sister's co-worker, Lena (Emily Watson, BREAKING THE WAVES), who he has struck up some real chemistry with even after behavior on their first date that would have scared away 99% of other women. But a later exchange of bizarre "romantic" notions with show how perfect they just may be together. In a parallel storylines, a fraudulent sex line company tries to extort money out of Barry, he finds and caringly restores an abandoned harmonium and discovers a loophole in a Healthy Choice pudding contest that will give him untold frequent flyer miles.
The film is less a laugh-a-minute comedy and more a quirky character study. Egan, in PUNCH-DRUNK, is much like Sandler's other characters — a good-hearted simpleton who has intense violent outbursts. And like other Adam Sandler films the comedy comes from people getting hurt or taken advantage of. What Anderson does so well is that he breaks down the feelings of your typical Adam Sandler film and intellectualizes them, developing a fuller, more complex character from the stereotypes. He's stripped away the slavish adherence to sentimentality and convention, and laid bare the dark id that uncomfortably lurks underneath all of Sandler's dimwitted comedies.
The film suffers a bit from really under-developing Lena, but do we ever really know why any girl would fall for any of Sandler's other characters? However, Barry is so intriguing that he carries the film, especially with the really wonderful, dare I say subtle, performance from Sandler. The movie star allows himself to be an outcast here, which the pseudo-jocks he plays in his other films so desperately try to pretend they aren't. This film just proves that Anderson is a young director, who totally knows what he's doing. You'll never look at Adam Sandler the same way after this film.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
