A touchstone movie for many millennials, this surreal Paul Thomas Anderson romantic comedy is the odd one out in his richly ambitious filmography that includes Magnolia, Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread (by any reckoning one of the most eclectic and exciting runs of the past quarter century). But it’s even more of an outlier for star Adam Sandler, hitherto best known for dumb multiplex comedies. Sandler is Barry Egan, who operates a small warehouse, and who is desperately in need of a love life.
Giddy and hysteric, surreal and expressionist, Punch-Drunk Love throws together goofball comedian Adam Sandler and art house princess Emily Watson, an experimental percussive score, abstract chromatic interludes like something out of the 1960s avant-garde, novelty toilet plungers with unbreakable handles, 12,000 puddings, seven sisters and a mysterious harmonium (for good vibrations).
No mere plot summary can do justice to the wild, sweet pleasures of Punch-Drunk Love […] poetry is perhaps the best way to think about Mr. Anderson’s suave, exuberant balance of free-form inspiration and formal control… his mastery of the emotional machinery of the medium is breathtaking.
AO Scott, New York Times
By turns irritating, strange, and finally entrancing, Punch-Drunk Love is something we haven’t seen before: a manic-depressive romantic comedy that aspires to the soul of a musical.
Charles Taylor, Salon.com
One of the strangest and most beguiling romantic comedies ever made.
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Paul Thomas Anderson
Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Luis Guzmán, Philip Seymour Hoffman
USA
2002
English
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Credits
Producer
Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi, JoAnne Sellar
Screenwriter
Paul Thomas Anderson
Cinematography
Robert Elswit
Editor
Leslie Jones
Original Music
Jon Brion
Production Design
William Arnold
Art Director
Sue Chan
Also in This Series
Paul Thomas Anderson’s is a risky, unorthodox cinema, flexing between grand gestures and hidden depths, but to rewatch his films is always to discover that fleeting, elusive but profound possibility of connection.
Hard Eight
Anderson's debut is a deceptively modest character piece about a veteran gambler (Philip Baker Hall) who takes a much younger man under his wing and teaches him how to play the system and win. Until things take a darker turn...
Magnolia
This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they criss-cross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age: Daniel Day-Lewis is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise, a Trumpian figure of naked self-assertion; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.
Licorice Pizza
PTA's oddball courtship comedy takes us to the San Fernando Valley in 1973. 15-year-old aspiring actor Gary Valentine has the hots for 25 year-old Alana. She's bemused but admires his self confidence. It's quirky, meandering, but it sneaks up on you.
