Punch-Drunk Love

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🎙️ EPISODE 423: 03.17.22 For a very long time, I would always tell people this was the best PTA movie. And just because I was being cute (guilty as charged) doesn't mean I was wrong. Though I walked away from this most recent viewing with some doubt as to that fact (personally, currently), I still feel like it's a valid sentiment. You do you (meaning: you rank the Paul Thomas Anderson however the hell you like). That's kind of the thing about watching a film over and over again, and then finally watching it for the purposes of your little vanity review website. You end up taking notes like "google whether or not Healthy Choice™ paid to be a featured brand in this." Some part of you is stripped away when you have to remove the fan hat for the critic's one.

Parts of the first act didn't hit as hard this time around, and I felt like the dinner with his sisters scene especially was played too broadly, felt just a tad forced and over the top. But then this hits a different gear and the remaining fifty minutes or so are just pure bliss. There's a 10+ scene at Adam Sandler's warehouse set to Jon Brion's scattered rhythmic score that is pure bliss. It wraps up like so...


It's perfection from this scene on out. It's then when we're introduced to Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his many classic if painfully brief roles. But I also want to shout-out Luis Guzman in this. What he does — from his facial expressions to his delivery — is so subtle and excellent. Hoffman deservedly gets the heaping praise for his brief supporting role, but Guzman, and specifically his character's relationship with Sandler's, really struck me this time around....


"You're going to Hawaii! That is so wonderful..." Love that line so much.



I stumbled upon this interview with PTA where he struggles to convince the interviewer that his only goal was to make an entertaining movie, and he wasn't overly concerned with thematic elements. And this is something that has always struck me about Punch-Drunk Love and what will forever set it apart: it's a romcom. Deep in its bones, this IS a romantic comedy. It has the arc and follows all the beats. (Really, I would say only Boogie Nights rivals it in terms of having a conventional structure.) But it's still a Paul Thomas Anderson film. So the audience is left with questions, or — better put: seeking questions. This is the trick of the master director. They thread things so deeply into the ENTERTAINMENT of it all, you're left wondering if they were not there at all or completely over your head. The only answer I'm sure of at this point is that it doesn't matter when it's as beautiful as this...



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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 422 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 424 ⫸

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Punch-Drunk Love is a 2002 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and starring Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzmán, and Mary Lynn Rajskub. It follows an entrepreneur with social anxiety in love with his sister's co-worker. It was released on May 19, 2002.