September 13, 2002

Punch-Drunk Love
(Columbia Pictures) Rated R
Released: October 11, 2002

I’m trying desperately to figure out what was in the Evian at Cannes this year.  I’m glad they picked up on Bowling for Columbine, even if the degree of attention was probably less about the film than about bashing America along with Moore.  But the other big American hit over there, well…

I’ve been looking for someone…anyone… to explain to me just what made anyone think that Punch Drunk Love was something special… that is to say, something more special than, say, the much pilloried Full Frontal.  There were three positive reviews sitting on RottenTomatoes.com.  Interestingly, the Hollywood Reporter misidentified *****Mary Anne Rasjkub****.  But I chose Mike D’Angelo’s review to use as a reference:

“Slender absurdist romantic comedy gets the full force of P.T.'s visual imagination, with every moment so spectacularly heightened that the picture's nearly over before you notice how empty and impersonal it is. Might have been more effective with an actor in the lead role; I'd hoped Anderson would reveal some hitherto unknown aspect of the Sandler psyche, but he remains one of the least expressive, least soulful, least charismatic movie stars in cinema history -- a dead-eyed, bullet-headed emotional vacuum. Doesn't much matter, though, since the comedy here emerges not from personality but from aesthetics: the precise framing, the bravura camera movements, Jon Brion's insistently percussive score, Sandler's ridiculous blue suit. Every cut a winner, and I could happily look at production stills for hours; frequently hilarious, too, albeit largely in an incredulous, how-the-hell-did-this-get-studio-funding kind of way. Think of it as P.T.'s Buffalo '66, except made by somebody who'd only seen that movie instead of somebody who'd lived it.”

So, that is considered a positive review! 

The funny thing is that there isn’t a whole lot there with which I disagree.  I don’t think Sandler deserves the blame and I don’t think anything in the movie was hilarious.  I agree that the movie was empty and impersonal.  The only effort at any storytelling is aesthetic.  And if you think it’s funny that PT Anderson got financing for this non-starter, enjoy the laugh.  I don’t mind that he’s making a small, experimental film any more than I am offended that Soderbergh made Full Frontal.  But I just want to make the point that the only joke here is on people who think that it’s something more than that. 

I do think of it as PT Anderson’s Buffalo 66… it is self-indulgent, pointless and hard to watch for more than a few minutes at a time.