Easily one of the best and most exciting movies of the year.
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10/25/02
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
79
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:180
Fresh:142
Rotten:38
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Punch-Drunk Love is weird and delightfully funny, even though Sandler essentially plays the same character he has always played in all his movies.
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Paul Thomas Anderson follows 1999's MAGNOLIA with the intensely compelling character study PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a quiet, shy, socially awkward man with an office in an... [More]
Starring: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Reviews for Punch-Drunk Love
Punch-Drunk Love knows how to reap epic delight from the most precious of details.
10/25/02
Full of surprises.
10/25/02
[Anderson] uses a hit-or-miss aesthetic that hits often enough to keep the film entertaining even if none of it makes a lick of sense.
10/25/02
It's wacky. It's unpredictable. It's sure to give pause to Sandler fans and, smaller in number but every bit as dedicated, to Watson admirers too.
10/25/02
Director Paul Thomas Anderson hasn't reinvented Sandler; he's just allowed those of us who tired very quickly of his innocent naif shtick to see how effectively it can be put in the service of something to care about.
10/25/02
So unconventional that it is perhaps the most inaccessible movie Sandler's ever done. Ironically, however, it may also be the most accessible thing that Anderson's ever done.
10/25/02
Everything about Punch-Drunk Love works in a Being John Malkovich sort of way save one. Sandler. When your star doesn't work, it's hard to get us to buy into the rest of a movie as unusual as this.
10/25/02
Self-indulgent filmmaking at its ugliest, despite a complex performance by Adam Sandler.
10/25/02
Many people have noticed the anger underneath Sandler's goofball smile -- but Anderson understands that below that anger is a gooey caramel center, which gushes forth nicely in the most sentimental moments of Anderson's confection.
10/25/02
Surreal, funny, and stylish, Punch-Drunk Love is one of the best movies of 2002
10/25/02
In Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler doesn't so much discard his old persona as illuminate it, breathing life into the cardboard characters that populated his earlier films.
10/25/02
The sheer unpredictability of Love intoxicates you while you watch it, leaving you lightheaded, woozy.
10/25/02
Don't be surprised if this emperor is wearing no clothes.
10/25/02
Punch-Drunk Love comprises a fairly slight story. The force of the film derives from its interesting, unusual characters.
10/25/02
This is a film with great heart by a filmmaker with terrific style and an actor with undeniable chops.
10/24/02
"Punch-Drunk Love" is a little like a chocolate milk moustache...
10/24/02
An unnerving and exhilarating romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comic ... Punch Drunk Love is more revelatory than it is enjoyable.
10/24/02
... the former “SNL” star really is ideal as Anderson’s put-upon hero. Regardless, a much longer “stretch” might have been realized with a more mainstream actor in such a whacked-out role.
10/24/02
Has elements of sheer brilliance, others of definite intrigue, and some that are disappointingly undernourished.
10/23/02
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