fuck this.
Netflix sent me Punch Drunk Love this weekend… Now, I knew nothing about the film other than I thought I had heard it was good. I vaguely remembered hearing the general plot was something about Adam Sandler playing someone with Down Syndrome that fell in love, and that it was fairly well done.
Let’s start by saying I’m not Mr. Sandler’s biggest fan. Frankly, he’s an ass. And, I’m not trying to be insulting here, but I do think Mr. Sandler could pull something like that off. Similar to Mr. DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape… I think it could really be interesting. This is why I rented it.
Unfortunately (and much to my dismay), that wasn’t it at all. Mr. Sandler wasn’t retarded, just extremely annoying. And the movie wasn’t interesting. It sucked. Miserably.
The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, who’s previous works include The Worst Movie Ever Made (a.k.a. Magnolia) tried really, really hard to make a movie that was “interesting”.
I’m sure a lot of money was spent in the production. There was some truly lovely cinematography. There was a great opening credit sequence with nice colors and good typography. There was good music. There was a fantastic car crash in the beginning. And heck, even Philip Seymour Hoffman was in it… he’s great in almost everything.
Looking at it, this movie had a lot of ingredients to make something good.
But it wasn’t.
The characters were ridiculous and flat. Adam Sandler’s character in particular, was completely unlikable, and poorly played. The dialogue was plodding and uninteresting. Any attempts at symbolism were forced and heavy handed, trying so hard to be “deep”. The entire plot, which was stretched out in an attempt to have some kind of interesting subtext about humanity, was pitiful, slow and dull. The only small spark of interest I had was trying to figure out where I’d seen Mary Lynn Rajskub before (answer: she was on 24).
And, like everyone else, she was awful too.
I actually ended up watching the last 1/3 of the movie in Fast-Forward, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
Nothing ever did. Finally, it just ended.