Release Date: October 11th, 2002

Stars: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Hazel Mailloux, Julie Hermelin

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Opening Weekend: $367,000 (#23)

Total Gross: $17 million

Story: Barry Egan (Sandler) is a lonely Californian resident who works in selling toiletry devices. His office, located in a parking garage, is flooded with small diversions from Barry’s daily life such as a harmonium that he found on the street and a plethora of pudding packets that will help him collect frequent flyer miles. Barry is tortured by his seven over-bearing sisters and feels the need just to be left alone. His perspective changes when he meets Lena (Watson), a quirky and sweet young girl whom he falls for in an unusually short amount of time. His relationship is threatened by a phone-sex operator who’s attempting to blackmail him into extorting money.

Criticism: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is probably the darkest and tonally agile comedic endeavor that I’ve ever seen, and that’s what makes it brilliant. Anderson’s direction excellently portrays an overwhelming sense of tension and discomfort with every scene, which is right in line with how the character of Barry Egan is written. Barry is represented as one of the most honest and heartbreaking individuals that I’ve ever seen on film, and of course of some of the credit for the transition has to go to Sandler. His ability to access both the exterior fragility of Barry and his tortured and broken-down psychosis makes this a performance for the ages. His relationships with the people around him are expertly conveyed as stressful and overbearing. The exception, of course, is his cute fling with Watson’s Lena, who accepts him for all of his insecurities and quirks without cynism,  a fresh change of pace from the typical love interest. Not enough can be said about Anderson as a filmmaker, for even though a subplot or two are muddled and inconclusive, Anderson does not lose touch for one second of Barry as a human being. The tonal shifts are perfectly timed so that they are both surprising and shockingly irate, which  gives the film extra emotional weight and allows it to earn its ending even more. Punch-Drunk Love is a hard film to say I enjoyed due to how tense and dark it eventually can get, but to say I was not mesmerized and captivated by its emotional depth and maturity would be a fib.

Rating: 9/10