Monday 16 June 2008

Punch Drunk Love [2002]


Punch Drunk Love is the tale of “boy meets girl, boy nearly looses girl, boy wins girl back and lives happily ever after”. Unfortunately for viewers fed on a daily diet of rom-coms, and fortunately for movie lovers like me, the movie’s similarity with conventional romantic comedies ends here (and might I add, with spectacular consequences). Regarded by some as the best work of one of the finest directors of his generation – Paul Thomas Anderson, and certainly his quirkiest, this wildly idiosyncratic and deliriously comic movie chronicles how a moment of severe indiscretion and his unlikely plunge into love allows Barry, a severely hen-pecked guy with serious personality disorders, to finally be his own man. Adam Sandler has turned a sort of role that he has played all his life into something delightfully unique. The director (who also wrote the screenplay for the movie) is of course largely responsible for the marvelous character sketch; music has also been well used to further the weird tonality of the film. As one critic has aptly put it, it is a romantic comedy on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t have provided a better single sentence description of this “romantic comedy” turned upside down.








Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Genre: Romantic Comedy/Comedy Drama
Language: English
Country: US

No comments: