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Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) concocts a plan using
pudding box tops as a means to romance in
Punch-Drunk Love.
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Want to know how I feel about Adam Sandler? Here's something I wrote earlier this year: "We all know that the French adore Jerry Lewis. The challenge is to find a country willing to adopt Adam Sandler ... I regularly enjoy comedies that require audiences to check their brains at the door. I also like slapstick humor. With that in mind, I still feel confident declaring Adam Sandler as the most unoriginal and uninteresting of all current comic actors."
I wrote that critical slap before seeing Sandler's funny and emotionally rich performance in director Paul Thomas Anderson's dazzling romantic comedy Punch-Drunk Love. Sandler is responsible for juvenile slapstick like Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds, films that make me earn my critic's salary twice over. Anderson creates sprawling ensemble dramas like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, the type of anticipated films that have no use for Sandler's childish antics. At first glance, they share nothing in common. Yet together, Anderson and Sandler have created the biggest surprise in my 10 years of reviewing movies. Punch-Drunk Love floored me, and I'm better off for it.
In the film, Sandler plays Barry Egan, a hot-tempered businessman who struggles to get his life together after falling in love with Lena (Emily Watson), a friend to one of his many sisters.
A lot of what Sandler shows in Punch-Drunk Love is familiar. He's a clumsy clown dressed in an ill-fitting blue suit who stumbles his way around people, especially women. He partly plays Egan as the "kind-hearted doofus," pretty much the same character he dusts off for all his comedies.
What separates this role from a typical Sandler goon like Happy Gilmore is an engaging performance that's sensitive and complex. He is believably insecure as Egan. Sandler deserves credit for complementing Watson's soft-spoken Lena with a character who's both funny and heartfelt.
Opportunities are everything in moviemaking. Before L.A. Confidential, director Curtis Hanson was known for forgettable thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The River Wild and The Bedroom Window. Boosted by a script based on a James Ellroy crime novel, L.A. Confidential proved what Hanson was capable of doing all along. Wonder Boys, a dazzling adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel, was his next film. 8 Mile, a drama inspired by Rap star Eminem's life story, looks just as interesting. Hanson always had the talent. He just needed the right opportunity.
That leads me to Sandler, who enjoys the last laugh with Punch-Drunk Love and teaches jaded movie critics an important lesson: You never know what someone is capable of until they're given the opportunity.
Ask me a year ago if Sandler was capable of starring in a great romance and I would have answered with a resounding no. Sandler might be an OK stand-up comedian and comic recording artist, but I'd tell anyone willing to listen he's no dramatic actor.
Punch-Drunk Love changes everything. Midway into the movie, in the film's most dazzling scene, Egan leaves his San Fernando Valley office and travels to Hawaii to surprise Lena. While they embrace in a hotel doorway, the shadows of passersby flutter in the background. Anderson focuses his camera on Egan and Lena's dark silhouettes and the moment is breathtaking.
Earlier this fall, at a packed press conference immediately after Punch-Drunk Love's initial Toronto Film Festival screening, I watched Anderson and Sandler speak glowingly about their collaboration together. Anderson defended his decision to work with Sandler. Even after watching Punch-Drunk Love, we critics were still projecting our cynical attitudes onto Anderson. We couldn't imagine him working with Sandler. So how could Anderson make the leap?
At that moment, right after Sandler's answer about his poor relationship with critics, I should have yelled, "Adam, will you ever forgive me for calling you unoriginal?"
I didn't apologize publicly to Sandler that day but I did learn a valuable lesson. Opportunities are everything. Sandler taught me that. Years ago, I sat quietly in a cinema packed with teen-age boys laughing hysterically at Sandler's The Waterboy. It was one of the few times when I felt like I shared nothing in common with the majority of moviegoers. With Punch-Drunk Love, I can finally sit in an Adam Sandler movie and be surrounded by my peers. I'm even looking forward to his next movie.
Finally, I'm one with the crowd. ©
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