Probably because my vision of romance is skewered towards the cynicism end of the love spectrum, my idea of a great love story is one in which the male love interest is an awkward, psychologically damaged, uncomfortable mess of a man. Actually, the two movies that I was torn between were the one with the lonely guy who buys pudding in bulk and the one where the real love story is between a man and music. Neither case is necessarily a blueprint for how to maintain a healthy relationship. Further proof that you can’t learn everything from the movies.
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Warning! Unpopular Opinions!:I don’t like “funny guys.” Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, and (most times) Zack Galifianakis just annoy me. I think it’s just the constant repetition of their schticks. Farley was always the “fat guy in little jacket”, Ferrell is usually an ignorant jackass, and Sandler’s character was the loser/moron who never grew up (even so, Happy Gilmore is pretty funny). Punch-Drunk Love was the first Sandler movie that I actually could say I loved.
This movie avoids most standard romantic-comedy stereotypes like they were cold sores. Sandler plays Barry Egan, a lonely and socially awkward man who makes a call to phone-sex line one night. It starts as a way to break the loneliness and turns into the kind of nightmare that usually shows up in the film noir genre: he gets blackmailed, beat up, chased through the streets at night, and, finally, has a showdown with “the Big Boss.” Somewhere in all of that, typical rom-com shenanigans happen: he falls in love, buys an office full of pudding, and flies to Hawaii. How these seemingly disparate storylines can co-exist in the same movie, and fit together, is one of the great joys that I get from this film.
This movie continued the streak of “pretty darn cool” (because “amazing” is too much and “good” is too little) Paul Thomas Anderson movies after Magnolia and Boogie Nights. The soundtrack is eclectic, with the film score coming from Jon Brion again, and the set of songs used ranging from Hawaiian slide guitar to Shelly Duvall (as Olive Oyl in Popeye) singing Harry Nilsson. This schizoid approach to the soundtrack reflects the complicated way this shy-boy meets girl story is told.
