Punch Out

Until recently, I'd had basically no interest in seeing the movie Punch-Drunk Love. But it popped up on a few "top movies of the decade" lists I saw last month, and started to get my interest. And the promise everywhere seemed to be "this is not your typical Adam Sandler movie." Well, good, because I hate typical Adam Sandler. Finally, I broke down and watched it.

I'll say first that it's true, Adam Sandler isn't being at all Adam Sandlery in this movie. I didn't find him unbearable to watch as I usually do. No, this time "unbearable to watch" was everything else around him.

I watched the movie, and I'm not even sure I can tell you what it is, or what exactly it's about. It's has all the disjointed dementia of a movie like Being John Malkovich, without the ingenuity or cleverness that tells you it's being weird for a purpose, not just weird for the sake of being weird. Nor does it seem to have any point to make, never mind one as dramatic or powerful as a BJM. Hell, it doesn't even have the message, craft, or creativity of a lesser Charlie Kaufman work like Synecdoche, New York.

Each scene just piles weirdness on top of the last, without rhyme or reason. The main character finds an abandoned harmonium on the road. Then he witnesses a violent car crash. Then he's being flirted with by a boring woman. Then he's buying pudding to win a contest. Then some kind of mob is chasing after him for standing up to a phone sex operator trying to blackmail him? Alright, I'm skipping a few steps here, but not that knowing them would help.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson tries to throw art on screen for our amazement/enjoyment, but each salvo fails to land. Years later, he'd do much better in my mind with There Will Be Blood, which, though dense and even boring at times, still has moments of skill and beauty. Strip away any such transcendent moments, and you have Punch-Drunk Love.

I think any critic putting this on a top film list is only doing it in the spirit of "the emperor's new clothes," claiming to see brilliance here when there is in truth nothing. It's tedious, sloppy, disjointed, and boring. An absolute F.