Punch Drunk Love

Yo, I can't help it that I'm allergic to your ILXOR-CHICK-ATTRACTIN-COLOGNE.

I was very impressed with Sandler. None of his previous films had remotely appealed to me. Is he as good in any of those? PTA seemed to be implying that his acting strength was obvious in his previous work.

i think the movie captured a feeling of craziness - sandler being struck with a barrage of insanity and bullshit. can someone remind me what set off his 'episode' in the restaurant bathroom??'

biggest part i've seen mary-lynn rajskub in so far... i hope she continues to act more!

Overall, I thought PDL was worth seeing for the little moments, like any PTA film. Narratively, it's a shambles.

so is jon bryon! (the guy that did the music)

hey martin s, that mad lady was RIGHT punch drunk love was quite loud

I don't remember where I mentioned the mad woman! She wasn't mad for thinking it was loud, but because of the way she behaved after the matter was discussed and everyone else tried to move on, and she kept shouting about the noise.

Anyway, it left me a little bemused but I loved it. The Shelly Duval song was great and there was a terrific orchestral piece at one point too. I gurgled with pleasure quite a lot.

I mean, what was up with that terrible music, that played whenever they were in the warehouse??

Adam Sandler was wasted on this film. Give me Mr Deeds any day. Seriously.

(note: I watched this on a DVD that kept freezing, and the wide screen took up half the screen, and the stereo sound was hard to follow. *Sigh* I just want to be able to get things on video. I was shouting at the TV by the end of the film, fwding and rwding to try and get the damn thing to play. I don't usually shout at the TV)

oh i love love love this film!

CHAKI YOU HURT ME IN MAH HEART!!!!

I loved this movie so much. It's hella simple, sweet, the music, in it's gratingness, does very well to sorta put you in Barry's mind. Luis Guzman is like ALWAYS the shit in every movie he's ever in, too, even when he's got a really basic supporting role like in this. I think this is PTA's subtlest and easiest-on-the-mind film, I mean, it's like pretty much just a really twee lovely and just-slightly-fucked-up love story that manages to avoid a lot of love story cliches. Ah, I dunno, to each their own...

here's how it read to me: put-upon shlub (by everyone, oh his awful sisters, what cunts grr!) learns to love perfect, motiveless englishwomen and threaten evil sex-industry managers who have DONE HIM WRONG. crank the quirks up to 11 (plungers, how delightful!), add a few wierdo color washes, presto.

Magnolia kind of sucks, too. ooh, so serious, that movie is!! wowee the human condition blah blah fucking blah. tom cruise cries, how AMAZING.

i'm beginning to realise i judge people based on their opinions of this film.

A little more context, please?

I love this film, Sean! xpost

Adam Sandler was wasted on this film. Give me Mr Deeds any day. Seriously.

old ilx, ladies and gents.

david, that's great! yet another confirmation that the technique works.

I just think this is such a great movie, so beautiful and tender, and emotionally startling, and arbitrary and strange. i love so much the way it takes a romantic comedy and reduces the romcom plot elements to their most basic form, to the point of outright absurdity, and the only throughline of strength and clarity and sense in the whole film is the certainty in the end that I LOVE HER. and it revels in the arbitrariness of this, the unjustifiedness of this, the inexplicableness of this - and it resonates in me as a romantic but also as a hopeless pomo pessimist. it's the idea that a love, no matter how weird or accidental or arbitrary that (or any other love) is, can be grabbed with both hands, and you can forget the rest, and just try to feel fully that pleasure, and all colour and sound and light, its warmth hot enough to feel on your face.

it's one of the best voicings i've ever seen of this post-postmodern (neo-modern?) idea, that everything's fuzzy and fake and confusing and distracting and bullshit and yet I LOVE YOU O I LOVE YOU OH I DO.

(AND YET DESPITE THE ABOVE MUMBOJUMBO IT'S SO EFFORTLESS, LIGHT AND SILLY.)

and i don't know what it is that makes it a good barometer for my friends... whether it's the romanticism, or the particular aesthetic of colour/percussion/silence, or the broken comedy of sandler's performance, or the vague tweeness i guess... but i suspect it's the ability to BELIEVE and FEEL while in the midst of the ridiculous; the particular alchemy of sincerity and confusion.

or something!

OTM.

Scenes with his sisters are the best.

Oh man, my boyfriend was totally living this life: completely shy, gentle & inhibited man with only older sisters and a mom pretty much running his life and forcing his choices, but without the whole phone sex subplot.

most irritating fairytale of all time.

man the 'symbolism' with the little 'pump organ' was so awful. only jerks feel anything from p.t.a. films.

-- chaki (chaki), Saturday, November 23, 2002 11:03 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^this

Went into this film thinking I would love it, was nonplussed, and then on reflection near-on disgusted. Awful, manipulative, childish crap with very little artistic integrity and almost no fun whatsoever. This guy did Boogie Nights???!!!

dreadful third act but otherwise pretty damn good.

yeah ok i'll give you that after about an hour i was thinking 'this is odd and slow and a bit self-indulgent, but there's potential'. i mean, even at the end of the film, i thought 'was there something in there i missed?'. the more i considered it the emptier it became.

The distinction is this was aggressively crap, whereas Boogie Nights and Magnolia were frequently diverting bullshit.

stoked for his western

how terrible that is going to be

script is good. and this from somebody who thought Punch Drunk Love was like cheese-grater rape.

hard eight was lame. boogie nights and magnolia are entertaining for movies with nothing but hand-me-down ideas i guess. punch-drunk love is pretty forgettable and jon brion is awful. gonne see 'there will be blood', maybe it won't suck?

So many reviews speak of this film as a successful presentation of repressed emotion and rationality-within-irrationality, a genuine work of bizarre art. I know that's what the film's trying to do, but it's done so crassly and with such riveting dullness that I'm at a loss to explain the (very widespread) love. Do the critics fear being seen hating on artsy films?

if punch drunk is artsy than call me miro

Well, quite. The absolute stupidity and manipulative terribleness of those 'abstract' doodly shittens only struck me afterwards. The great thing about postmodernism is that you don't actually need to say anything. ;_;

what on earth does this movie have to do with postmodernism

The doodly bits are fairly postmodern. They're there for the sake of being there, not for their own worth.

i think paul thomas anderson actually talked about consciously trying to make a post-modern love-story?

i.e. the director has stepped outside of the artistic process, and artificially logjammed something in that has in itself little artistic value, but which will self-consciously proclaim an understanding of abstraction and caprice. xp

The same is true of many of this film's quirks. The truck tipping over is not part of the story, it does not denote anything. It is just an image. The prevalence of isolated imagery ahead of narrative coherence or even image coherence is about as postmodern as it gets.

i.e. the director has stepped outside of the artistic process, and artificially logjammed something in that has in itself little artistic value, but which will self-consciously proclaim an understanding of abstraction and caprice. xp

Chorus
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

i hate to flog a dead horse but id really rather not blame punch drunk love's failures on "postmodernism"

the blame rests solely on the movie sucking in every possible way

I'm not blaming it entirely on 'postmodernism'. I'm just saying that bits of it show unwanted postmodernist tendencies. This contributes to but is in no way a full excuse for the film's abject direness.

ugh

A large vocal minority dislikes PTA's new one, btw.

you're all idiots

or SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!

^^^OTM

Yeah, I would argue that the first 20 mins or so of this movie are the best 20 mins of any movie.
-- A Nairn (moretap), Monday, August 18, 2003 2:15 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

^^^this guy hits heavy

enrique, enrique, enrique. this is sad news to me.

dude nrq u like this?

as this thread seems to contain a wide range of opinion im not sure who dude is mad at

i think he's quoting sandler from the film, in which case it would appear he is a fan (also, the large consensus immediately preceding him was "massive dud").

I think this movie is great. Some sluggish or weak turns towards the third act p'rhaps, but, geez Adam Sandler is amazing. Plus there's one scene where Emily Watson's character looks at him in this "no, you don't understand...I understand...and I really like you; this is real", way that I find really affecting

i sound a bit jaggery up there, years ago, but wow i'm baffled by the luv for this movie: seemed immediately and thoroughly like twee sexist crybaby garbage from beginning to end, a really unenjoyable experience. do not get.

I really liked this movie and I don't really like many movies. It's important to me on a personal level in that it was the very first time I'd seen the now deceased Jeremy Blake's work. Also, I'm trying to figure out what anyone could possibly find offensive about Jon Brion's music.

....or is that it is so inoffensive? :)

i like it, i was calling all the 25 december posters idiots.

this movie is so bad I can barely remember a single thing about it except for some long shot of Sandler picking up a package from the street and those horrible new age-y swirly color interludes

there is a small chance i may attempt to re-evaluate this film at some point in my life, now you gotta persuade me mr henrique de la mil...ton

-shakey mo hates it
-morbius hates it

persuaded yet?

fwiw Morbz and I rarely agree on film

damn ILX has been around for a minute

hey i hated it when it first came out way upthread!

shakey mo and i were the only two who really went to bat for "a scanner darkly", and i remain convinced of that film's brilliance.

still want to see the western, still think this movie is weak

I rate this and Blood about equal

i'm pretty sure i defended it; i thought it was good. not brilliant. i don't know what postmodern means and i don't think pta does either. i don't think this film was it though. it *is* an earnest film, and maybe a bit twee. i don't usually (ever) like twee things. is it sexist? i don't buy into the idea that mid-century hollywood perfected the romantic comedy. i enjoy some screwballs, but it's a typical film critic fetish, the 'hard-nosed', the 'unsentimental'.

don't think 'there will be blood' has a single horse, and there's fuck-all gunplay -- or indeed, blood. it's not a western, and it's not great.

xposts

defended it = scanner darkly

Also, PDL has at least one respectable if idealized female character, even if it took about 37 other foul women to get there.

the hell? i think pta does better with women than, say, robert altman. in pdl the sisters = the brothers = fairytale quality alibi called in.

is the woman idealized? she's kind of nuts.

I love this movie even more after reading the most recent hater comments. Spite Drunk Love.

as long as there's blood in this western i don't care if there are horses.

I don't remember thinking Emily Watson was nuts, but I had just seen Breaking the Waves not long before seeing PDL.

damn if dell AND NRQ love it...

i will admit that i hate it more for what it seemed to me to be than for the actual viewing experience. in that immediately after finishing it i was all 'hmm, that was OK, what was it all about', then after a bit of thought i decided that i hated it. the reason i hated it is probably that i deemed it a terrible, squandered opportunity to make something good; i don't tend to loathe genuinely awful-from-start-to-finish movies, unless those movies are A Perfect Storm or Apollo 13. it had promise, but i felt badly let down. those fucking faux-ambient segments. that reliance upon kook over substance. ugh.

david, that's great! yet another confirmation that the technique works.

I just think this is such a great movie, so beautiful and tender, and emotionally startling, and arbitrary and strange. i love so much the way it takes a romantic comedy and reduces the romcom plot elements to their most basic form, to the point of outright absurdity, and the only throughline of strength and clarity and sense in the whole film is the certainty in the end that I LOVE HER. and it revels in the arbitrariness of this, the unjustifiedness of this, the inexplicableness of this - and it resonates in me as a romantic but also as a hopeless pomo pessimist. it's the idea that a love, no matter how weird or accidental or arbitrary that (or any other love) is, can be grabbed with both hands, and you can forget the rest, and just try to feel fully that pleasure, and all colour and sound and light, its warmth hot enough to feel on your face.

it's one of the best voicings i've ever seen of this post-postmodern (neo-modern?) idea, that everything's fuzzy and fake and confusing and distracting and bullshit and yet I LOVE YOU O I LOVE YOU OH I DO.

(AND YET DESPITE THE ABOVE MUMBOJUMBO IT'S SO EFFORTLESS, LIGHT AND SILLY.)

― sean gramophone, Monday, July 30, 2007 11:05 AM (1 year ago)

sorry for the bump, but sean really articulated how i feel about this movie. i have a really, really, strong emotional connection to this film, mostly i think because I identify quite strongly with certain facets of Barry's character. go sean. it's cool to see that ilx liked this too.

okay, nevermind, opinion is pretty divided here. but still

movie's awesome

i hated this movie

i cant even remember one scene from it but i sure remember the seething anger i felt afterwards

you're heartless!

but really, i think that a big part of getting into this movie is being able to identify with sandler's character. i found parts of the movie absolutely excruciating, but in a good way - everything that was happening to him i felt was happening to me/had happened to me/will happen to me in the future (nb i'm not nearly as much of an introvert as Barry!)

i seem to remember him being kind of a loser that refused to help himself

The bonus feature of them filming the Mattress Man ad over and over is great.

^^^ Pretty sure they only film the ad once, but watching it over and over is basically necessary.

disbelief at the hate for this film! i'd have though it'd be right up ILX's street. i loved it personally.

also this brought a lol for sure =

stoked for his western

― gr8080, Tuesday, 25 December 2007 01:07 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how terrible that is going to be

― chaki, Tuesday, 25 December 2007 01:11 (2 years ago) Bookmark

i may need to see this again with a more sympathetic eye

to rationalise my hatred: i saw it and upon the credits rolling, thought it wasn't TOO bad at all. watched some dvd extras. didn't mind it.

but then, it festered. the aftertaste was objectionable as sin. i'd been duped. at least, i felt duped. for a movie solely based around character, i hadn't once been made to believe in a character. all there had been were smoke and mirrors and gimmicks.

but i could be wrong. hmph.

Adam Sandler is pretty believable as an angry awkward nerd, I thought.
Much more so than as a successful bitter comedian in Funny People where he got more believably out-bittered by Eminem.

god, i fucking LOVE this one

karina longworth on pdl: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/film_salon/2009/12/17/longworth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJz84S6Quec

also omg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PwsDb6K6S0#t=05m47s

damnit, that didn't work, #t=05m47s

Comments to that piece are revealing.

i was highly, and pleasantly surprised, by the film's wonderfully brave risk in switching to splashes of abstract color in representing emotion. when i saw this happen in the theater i couldn't help but let slip an audible "oooohhh...".
—jgarth

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I spent the entire movie expecting to find out that...

Emily Watson's character was nothing but a hallucination of Adam Sandler's character. Really. I'm not kidding. Does she even exist outside of Sandler's need for her?
—BollWeeble

otm

So brave! So wonderfully brave, to cop out of representing real human emotion through good acting or good filming! Random colours WHAT DOES IT MEAN it must convey EMOTIONAL TURMOIL/CALM (delete as appropriate)

I hesitate to call it good acting when Sandler is basically modulating his Canteen Boy persona, which is already based on Sandler, but definitely good casting at the least. That's genuine nerd anger there!

So brave! So wonderfully brave, to cop out of representing real human emotion through good acting or good filming! Random colours WHAT DOES IT MEAN it must convey EMOTIONAL TURMOIL/CALM (delete as appropriate)

― Electric Universe (wherever that is) (acoleuthic), Monday, January 4, 2010 3:37 PM (3 hours ago)

maybe theyre just...random colors and you're getting all mad over nothing and should stfu?

i'm responding to someone. read above! also, why random colours then? why anything i guess. freedom of artistic choice

p.s. not actually mad

It is a moving painting -- it's a painting that moves the viewer.

lol

yeah, it's just a real pretty effect. i don't think it's supposed to be profound; as far as meaning goes, it's more or less intentionally trite.

It is a moving painting -- it's a painting that moves the viewer.

this is kind of LOL.

LJ gets mad at non-representational paintings in galleries bcz they're not as good at representing real human emotion as a photograph of a face

not a jackson pollock fan, i gather

who is LJ?

LJ = lou1s j@gger = acoleuthic

I should really just start a "uber crazy stuff my dad says about movies" thread but he told me once that the car crash at the beginning of this movie is prob. based on a time in the late 80s when my uncle and PTA flipped a jeep and almost died while driving down a canyon.

the stories aren't so much "rolling with the stars" as they are "the only reason I got into this business is because my best friend was supplying Robert Towne with really amazing weed," Homer Simpson-type stories.

yeah, it's just a real pretty effect. i don't think it's supposed to be profound; as far as meaning goes, it's more or less intentionally trite.

― figuratively, but in a very real way (amateurist), Tuesday, January 5, 2010 12:05 AM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what do u mean by that

I spent the entire movie expecting to find out that...

Emily Watson's character was nothing but a hallucination of Adam Sandler's character. Really. I'm not kidding. Does she even exist outside of Sandler's need for her?
—BollWeeble

yeah this is a good way of putting my biggest problem with the movie. not emily watson's fault, but she kind of has no character at all to work with in pdl. there are some intimations of shyness and quirkiness, but mostly she's this kind of blank slate for his projections. i think it just leaves a big void in the movie. i like adam sandler in it and there are specific oddball things about the movie i like a lot (including philip seymour hoffman's bit, especially that he's running his sex-phone scam out of the back of a furniture store), but the whole thing has trouble hanging together.

cmon woman hating brings everything together

'Random colours', no wonder the guy committed suicide.

LJ gets mad at non-representational paintings in galleries bcz they're not as good at representing real human emotion as a photograph of a face

― Audrey Wetherspoons (sic), Tuesday, 5 January 2010 05:09 (5 hours ago) Bookmark

there's a time and a place. the artifice of these 'random colours' wasn't exactly jackson pollock. if i want abstract expression i'd like it integrated, not spliced, into a movie.

like the characters go to a museum and look at abstract paintings?

http://images.moviefill.com/a434839cfc1b430d_b37acd94bfce1220_o.jpg

no, like the movie itself is made with abstract expression. rather than a conventional piece of abstract expression being logjammed in. goddamn it do i have to rant about bunuel here

p.s. sarahel before you make some comment i am not actually gonna do that, chill

mia sara is cuet

he's not guilty of logjamming. he primes you with weird clothing and background colors.
it doesn't do much for me, but if the glove does not fit, you must acquit!

hughes definitely guilty of shoehorning a trip to the museum implausibly as fun outing for a high school student playing hooky, though.

Just saw this. I get the criticisms upthread, but I liked it.

but really, i think that a big part of getting into this movie is being able to identify with sandler's character. i found parts of the movie absolutely excruciating, but in a good way -

otm

Criterion of this comes out next week I think.

SHUT UP! SHUT - THE - FUCK - UP!

great film. enrique otm

the plot/narrative is a dud, but there's still very much to enjoy

why hasn't anyone else as canny as PTA cast Sandler in another dark dramatic role? I know I know, Reign Over Me, total garbage. but he's fantastic in PDL, it's an extraordinary performance.

He's in the Safdie bros new one...

whoa!! Nice

i watched the first 45 minutes of this last night and was surprised by how well it stood up. it was much funnier than i remembered though that might stem from not suffering from my own my crippling self doubt anymore. the sisters are great and he uses Luis Guzman's deadpan facial expressions really well. i was worried the early 00's tweeness would make it unbearable, but it's transcending those tendencies so far

It’s a great film, so dreamy and strange. Must watch again sometime. No idea what PTA was thinking to marry the Popeye soundtrack with a story about coupon collecting for air miles, but it worked. Can’t be bothered scrolling upthread to see if I said this already, but the first kiss where they meet is one of my favourite scenes. Awkward arm stretched out for a handshake, they collide and kiss in silhouette as the world jolts to life around them. I love love love love this film.

I like it too. It tends to get dismissed on the PTA thread, but I always responded to the weirdness, to the showdown between Sandler's rage and PSH's, and to the supporting performances from Emily Watson (something of a lead, I guess), Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Luis Guzman.

I don’t rate it as highly as Bill Nighy, but I think it’s up there with PTA’s best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZAM0IWo3sw