Punch-Drunk Love

I liked Punch-Drunk Love when it first came out 17 years ago, and I watched it again to see what I would think of it now. It's not a movie for everybody, but it hits perfectly for me. I can totally identify with Barry. The soundtrack gets a bit obtrusive, and the plot isn't terribly realistic. But I love the humor, and the way his sisters act is a spot-on representation of how people really are.

I generally haven't hated Adam Sandler movies. I liked 50 First Dates. I liked Billy Madison, although I was nine when I saw it, so my opinion might change if I saw it again. I think he eventually went south with the dumb comedies, though, and I haven't seen him in anything for a long time.

I saw Punch-Drunk Love when it came out, but that was 17 years ago, which is insane to think about. I liked it then.

The only things I remembered about it were that it had something to do with a sex line, Barry beat some people up, and he and the woman were together at the end. It's weird which things stick with you. I didn't really know who Emily Watson was then. So in my memory of the movie, she was totally different actress.

I loved all the kind of jump scares at the beginning. And it's so funny the entire time -- how people keep asking him about the piano and the pudding, when he hands the crowbar back the guy after he beats up his brothers, when he's picking up the entire display of pudding, when the handle on the plunger breaks, when he gets angry at Dean as he's leaving the store, and Dean says "that's that," so he leaves. Even just him walking around the store looking at all the Healthy Choice items.

The scene where he tells Lena he wants to smash her face in and she responds that she wants to eat his eyeballs is so bizarre, it's great.

I can identify with Barry a lot, and it's satisfying to see things work out for him. I liked that he never bought into Dean calling him a pervert. He knew he wasn't, and he didn't let that get to him. It was awesome how he just took out all the brothers with one hit, and that he had the grit to fly out to Utah and confront Dean in person. And I liked the contrast between that and how he acted when he gave them the money.

The character design was good in general. The brothers, Dean, Georgia, everybody was really interesting. Sometimes the way his sisters acted was funny, but all of it was such an accurate reflection of what people are like. Like when Lena is on the phone with Barry's sister. And she says her brother was being weird, and Lena says yeah, he was a little weird, and the sister says don't call him weird.

It was funny when Barry kept opening and shutting the door without going into the party. I don't do that exact behavior, but I can I identify with the feeling. And he was justified in not wanting to go, since they were just going to make fun of him the entire time. It was such a hectic moment, when everyone was talking at the same time as they were bringing things to the table. I almost expected Barry to freak out and leave. I would have wanted to leave. It was a shock, and totally unacceptable, to have him break the glass, but at the same time, it was a relief to end that cacophony.

I liked how his defense was usually just to respond "I don't know" to everything. It seemed to work. The scenes with the blobs of color on the screen were neat. I didn't like the part of the score where the music was all disjointed. And they played He Needs Me for way too long.

It's not very realistic. It's not likely that Lena would just happen to see his picture, and arrange to meet him, and it would work out that they're perfect for each other. I'm not entirely sure that all their problems are going to be solved just because they're together, either.

It was a cool scene when they met at the hotel. Although it's weird that it wasn't busy, and then all of a sudden it was super busy, and then it wasn't again. I liked that he was wearing a suit. It's interesting that he had just started doing it, but we never see what he used to wear, or him wearing anything else.

I didn't know that the writer/director, Paul Thomas Anderson, also wrote the screenplays for/directed There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice, so that's cool.

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