The Price is Right, B*tch

I had a ridiculous grin on my face for much of this past weekend, and it wasn't because of the embarrassing and often comical invasion of parents on campus. No, my happiness was induced by a 90-minute experience inside a movie theater where I saw Adam Sandler act for the first time in my life.

In an Oscar-worthy performance as Barry Egan, a small-business owner who is tormented by his seven sisters and who hordes frequent flyer miles by purchasing thousands of cups of pudding, Sandler schools us in the finer points of love, rage and everything in between. Punch-Drunk Love is a beautiful character study of a lonely, agonized man who, in an impulsive moment, calls a phone-sex hotline. Barry's life is then torn in two directions: Just as he gradually falls in love with the lovely Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), the hotline operator tries to extort money from him.

Ravaged by internal conflict, Barry surprises us again and again with his outbursts of sudden and violent rage--destroying a restaurant bathroom and smashing a patio door in bouts of sheer panic and anger.

This sense of recklessness carries over into Barry and Lena's relationship, where their respective anxieties become buried underneath a violently innocent love.

We are used to seeing these kinds of explosions from Adam Sandler in his goofily angry self-written roles, of course. The difference here is that writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has found a way to harness Sandler's unique comedic gift towards a more focused purpose. Barry Egan embodies the frustration that we all feel about ourselves, and strive to change.

Coming off the production of the darkly challenging Magnolia, it is understandable that P.T. Anderson chose to tell a much more uplifting and sweeter story in Punch-Drunk Love. Indeed, it is in the tradition of classic Hollywood musicals in which Anderson steeped himself to write this film, but you won't find any spontaneous singing here. Anderson has instead created a sense of music through the poetry of his images--the use of lighting and camera framing in Punch-Drunk Love accentuates the characters' revelations superbly. Coupled with the fascinating artwork of Jeremy Blake and the surprisingly rich score of Jon Brion, the experience of this film is like being washed in a sea of intoxicating perfume.

Never has a movie's intent been so clear and yet its resulting emotional impact so confusing. You will leave the theater happy, but a little bit worried, satisfied, yet slightly depressed, a bit dizzy, but altogether grounded in a sense of sublime contentedness.