Movie Review: Punch Drunk Love
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie has a good deal of
mature material, including very strong language, sexual
references and situations including a call to a telephone sex
line, and violence. Parents of Adam Sandler fans should know
that this is very different from his other movies and should
exercise caution in allowing teenagers to see it.
Families can talk about the use of symbols in the movie. Why is the word "love" spelled out in the abrasions on Barry's knuckles? Compare that to Robert Mitchum's famous portrayal of a con man posing as a preacher in "Night of the Hunter," with "love" tattooed across the knuckles of one hand and "hate" tattooed across the other.
Common Sense Media Review
Comedians use humor to transcend norms and act outside the
rules of civility to express the feelings we strive to keep
inside - anger, insecurity, resentment, and selfishness. Many
of them assume the freedoms of childhood to unleash the
superego and say and do and grab and insult without any
restrictions. Adam Sandler is very much in this tradition. His
comedies are based on essentially the same character -- a sweet
but immature guy with an anger management problem. They have
been been very successful with adolescent (and formerly
adolescent) male audiences, topping the box office almost
without exception.
Writer-director P.T. Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia") has taken that same character and created around it a highly original and intelligent movie. It's still about a sweet but immature guy with an anger management problem, so I can't say that the performance is a stretch for Sandler, but he deserves a lot of credit for playing that character straight, without the distance and comfort (and hostility) of laugh lines.
Sandler plays Barry, a man whose affable exterior hides enormous fear and fury. We first see him in a bright blue suit sitting at a desk in a bare corner of a warehouse, talking on the phone to some low-level staff person about the intricacies of a promotion that gives frequent flyer miles for purchases of groceries. Two stunning, almost hallucinatory events occur that no one seems to see but him. First, there is a massive truck accident that just seems to evaporate. Then, a small piano-looking instrument called a harmonium somehow just seems to appear on the sidewalk. He picks it up and brings it inside, and we see that he has an office in the warehouse and is in fact the boss of a business that sells novelty toilet plungers.
All of this tells us that we are embarking on a journey inside Barry, who through the course of the movie will unstop his clogged up feelings, chart a course between the sacred and the profane, and reach toward love and harmony. And it works very, very well on this level, as we see Barry no longer able to bear his current life and therefore willing to take risks, some wiser than others, to allow him to change. Anderson shows us Barry over and over again running through hallways. He confides to his brother-in-law that he needs to talk to someone. He calls a 900 number just to have someone to talk to. Both violate his trust in the most shattering manner, and both unleash siblings (played by real-life siblings) who abuse him emotionally and physically.
