Punch Drunk Love
I avoided Adam Sandler movies for a long time. Whatever it was about him, I didn’t get it.
I originally approached PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love with great apprehension. Anderson got career-best performances from movie-stars Burt Reynolds and Tom Cruise as well as an army of character actors, but the thought of him making a movie with Adam Sandler, I have to say, filled me with something like dread.
Well, he’s simply extraordinary in this picture, honestly, one of the great lead performances of our time. If you’ve never seen it, you owe it to yourself. Rarely have I left a movie theater feeling as alive as I did after seeing this movie.
Amazingly, Sandler pulls it off opposite none other than brainiacs Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman. His performance is full of detail, nuance and exquisitely observed detail. His performance is so unclassifiable that I initially felt baffled by it. It sounds like stunt-casting but it turns out to be something more like a miracle. Even though his character is as shy and closed-off as possible, he practically quivers with electricity.
Strangely enough, this movie fits right next to my Jim Carrey trilogy. In his own way, Sandler’s character is also a man-child who needs supernatural force to move on with his life. In his case, it’s a magic piano that shows up at the beginning of the movie, delivered immediately after an SUV spectacularly overturns in front of his office (I could practically hear Anderson say to his DP “Please tell me we got that.”)
The phone call between Sandler and Hoffman is one of the great real-life conversations ever filmed. Neither can believe that the other has the balls to say the things he’s saying, but neither one wants to hang up, lest the other get the better of him. The call escalates to such baroque levels of anger and disbelief, and yet feels completely real. I myself have had similar phone calls with the personnel of Verizon, Dish TV, Chase bank and Toyota Santa Monica, so I’ve had plenty of recent experience to compare it to.
But that’s another story.
PDL was the first, and quite possibly will be the only, time I identified so completely with an Adam Sandler character. It’s also the only Sandler movie I’ve consented to see in the theaters, but that’s mostly because I consider it first and foremost to be a P.T. Anderson film.
The phone call scene reminds me the kinds of harangues that would emanate from Michael O’Donoghue’s office at the National Lampoon (as described in the book Mr. Mike). Apparently, if he took issue with something — an overcharge, a defective product — he would wait and call the offending business from work, whereupon he would go apoplectic on the poor soul who answered his call. I expect it was quite entertaining, but also frightening, to watch.
I’ve only seen Punch Drunk Love on TV, so it was an edited version. However, despite this, I actually loved it. I was originally weirded out by it, with Sandler’s character just doing all this stuff that at first didn’t make sense… but I kept watching and I’m extremely glad I did because the ending is just so worth it.
I really have nothing insightful to say, though. Sorry about that.
Hey. Like I do?
Wow, when was Punch Drunk Love on tv?
Anyways, I loved that freakin’ movie. I rented it when it first came out on video, and wish that I had bought it instead. I’d love to see it again. I was on pins and needles just waiting for Sandler’s character to explode, and when he finally did, it did not disappoint.
I’m not a fan of Adam Sandler (Or Jim Carrey for that matter; except for a couple of movies, I feel like I’m watching the same Jim Carrey stand-up routine repeatedly), so I hadn’t seen this movie. However, if Proffy likes it, then I’ll have to check it out.
Wow, I wansn’t aware I had so much clout! I’d better be right. Or smiling dog will break my knees…;)
Hey, I don’t go around breaking knees willy-nilly, you know. The last time it was worth breaking someone’s knees was when someone suggested I watch Costner’s the Postman.
Then again, you do call me your Tyler Durben. It would be mildly entertaining to watch you break your own knees.
Don’t mean to be nitpicky…
Psssst…smiling dog…it’s Tyler Durden, with a d!
Re: Don’t mean to be nitpicky…
Nice avatar, Mr. Bottoms. Did you know I worked on the Wonder Woman movie?
Re: Don’t mean to be nitpicky…
Actually, I did not know that. In fact, I did not know there was a new Wonder Woman movie coming out.
And did you mean to type Mr.? ‘Cause I am more of a Ms. (More nitpickiness)
Re: Don’t mean to be nitpicky…
After I posted “Mr.” I quickly remembered that there are, in fact, two sexes (more or less) on this planet, and that you may belong to either one. My apologies.
Re: Don’t mean to be nitpicky…
That’s ok. I actually have quite a few stories where I was mistaken for a man. On paper, only. In college, they had me set up in a guy’s dorm, until they realized I was a woman. Then they had to scramble to find me a dorm room when I arrived. I also couldn’t get my first financial aid check because they thought I was a male who hadn’t registered for Selective Services. The thing is, I look nothing like a man. Maybe I just come across as “mannish” in writing form.
Re: Don’t mean to be nitpicky…
Well, you should have imagined me as a better typist, Ms. Jammybottoms. 😉
More about Philip Seymour Hoffman appears over at my blog Mere Words. Enjoy.
Adam Sandler first got my attention in 1992 in one of his first films (presumably shot in ’91, the year he made his SNL debut): Bobcat Goldthwaite’s “Shakes the Clown.” He plays the small role of one of Shakes’ clown buddies and what made him so memorable and funny in that movie was the way, in full clown makeup, he delivered his lines with a simple, nebbishy realism. He was, in a word, subtle. Yes, I know it seems funny to see the words “Sandler” and “subtle” in the same paragraph, but his remarkable performance in “Punch Drunk Love” didn’t come out of nowhere. He always had it in him.