Punch-Drunk Love vs The Apartment

I’m not exactly what you call an Adam Sandler fan.  I’m the one. Of the millions of satisfied customers, I’m the one who just doesn’t get it.  The tight-lipped line readings, like he’s trying to keep from laughing or saying the other characters’ dialogue; the weird bursts of unjustified anger that pop up in all of Sandler’s movies; and most of all, the ludicrous way his bipolar mushmouth characters always seem to get the girl anyway. That Sandler’s mulleted rageaholic Wedding Singer ended up with Drew Barrymore just about sent me over the edge.

So, you can understand my dilemma when I heard that one of my favorite directors, P.T. Anderson, was making a movie with one of my least favorite actors, Adam Sandler. I decided to give it a try.  First of all, Anderson made Mark Wahlberg and  Burt Reynolds likeable (well, for one movie anyway),  and he takes slightly oddball actors (Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly) and treats them like stars.  Besides, it could be worse: he could have cast David Spade.

A confession:  I’m a sucker for romantic comedies.  There, I admit it.  Let me rephrase that:  I’m a sucker for a good romantic comedy.  There are about 15 released per year, and one of them might be watchable. That is, one every three or four years. For every High Fidelity or Singles, there’s ten Lost and Founds, or Someone Like Yous.  In my mind, the template for these movies (the good ones) is The Apartment.  Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, the ultimate sad-sack loser:  bad job, no girl, cracky voice.  Basically the only thing keeping him from being fired is that he’s a single guy with an apartment.  What’s so important about that, you ask?  Well, it just so happens, his married higher-ups need a place for their lunchtime quickies.  Guess where they go?  Meanwhile, Jack is in love with Fran Kubelik, the cutest elevator/cafeteria girl ever, who unfortunately just might be one of those girls visiting his apartment.  The Apartment is so funny and sad and smart, and Jack Lemmon is great. He’s cynical and jaded, and you can tell by the way he moves around his apartment, he feels like he doesn’t live there.  Likewise, at work, it’s as if everything he touches belongs to someone else; even his suits seem borrowed.  He rocks, and he has the best Billy Wilder script, and Shirley Maclaine flirting with him in the elevator.  You can see bits and pieces of The Apartment in your better romantic comedies like Jerry Maguire and Bridget Jones, and thank God, you can see The Apartment all over Punch-Drunk Love. 

Adam Sandler plays Barry Egan, a distributor of novelty bathroom products, like clear plungers.  His office is in a tiny corner of an enormous ugly warehouse.  He wears the same suit every day.  His sisters call over and over to belittle him. He has no girlfriend, and his only friend is his coworker, played by Luis Guizman, because

a.  This is a P.T. Anderson movie and he’s willing to cast Guizman as something other than a drug dealer or prison inmate, and

b.  Luis Guizman plays the best friend. It’s a rule.

Of course, to Barry Egan, a friend is the guy who speaks to you at work.  Otherwise, he’s alone.  He makes a visit home one evening, but the harassment from his squad of sisters is so extreme that he breaks a sliding glass door.  It’s one of those moments in a movie where you laugh because it was such a shock, but then seconds later, you realize what happened and how awkward it was, and how awful you feel for laughing.  Like when someone falls?  I always laugh at them before I run over to help.  I wish that weren’t true.  Barry confesses to his brother-in-law that he hates himself and would like some help. He breaks down in tears, hides his face, and right then I became an Adam Sandler fan.  This is the first time anyone has written or directed for his strengths as an actor.  The vulnerable man/boy thing he does is perfect here, and his rage is justified.  Seriously, his sisters are frickin’ monsters.  Except…

One of them (played by that weird girl from Larry Sanders and The Anniversary Party—what is her name, anyway?) introduces him to a woman.  Emily Watson. Barry has already seen her, at the garage next door, the same day he found a busted organ beside the road (his periodic attempt to fix the organ is one of many touches that made this odd, small movie so interesting to me.  And yes, I know, it’s a harmonium. Get off my back).  He’s instantly smitten.  So was I.  Emily Watson is a great actor, but she usually plays crazy and/or crazy.  This was the first time I’d actually observed her as a functioning human and she’s downright cool.  She looks at Adam Sandler the way no actress has before, like she believes everything he says, and well, if she doesn’t quite believe everything, she’s willing to stick around and get to the bottom of it all sooner or later.  This is good for Barry, since he’s fallen on some hard times as of late.  The phone sex girl he called, just to talk, has been blackmailing him, putting him in touch with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a scary pimp/furniture store bully who dispatches the Creepy Blond Brothers to collect from Barry.  So, here it is:  Adam Sandler getting really really fucking angry in a movie, and for the first time, it’s completely and justifiably perfect.  When he unleashes tire-iron Hell on those blond brothers, it vindicated every underdog in every movie ever (not to mention a few of us sitting in the theater). It also, for a second, made me think that maybe Spade could have been cast after all. You know, as one of the brothers. POW.

Throughout Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson continues to frame his movie in surprising and beautiful ways.  He’s a director who actually cares how his movies look.  A scene of Sandler and Watson kissing in silhouette beneath an arch as dozens of people pass is simple, but striking to the point that I was thinking about it the rest of the movie. The scenes in Hawaii were so sweet and funny, that I’ve decided that maybe I’ll ask Emily Watson if she wants to go to Hawaii with me too. I also liked Barry’s pudding mission, with the grocery store scenes shot at a voyeuristic distance as if we’re all watching that weird pudding guy from a couple aisles over. And who hasn’t done that? Hell, I’ve been the weird pudding guy on occasion.

I think I’ll buy some pudding. That sounds good.  Butterscotch.  Not Healthy Choice though, like in the movie. I don’t think they make Butterscotch anyway. Pudding’s one of those foods you forget about, and like you haven’t had any for months, but then one day you’re in the store and you’re all “Hey, pudding, I forgot all about pudding. Why haven’t I been eating more pudding? That would rock today.  I’ll take it to work, and eat it late at night, and for breakfast or whatever. I should get one of each flavor.  Not yogurt. Pudding. Pudding rocks.”

Where was I?

So, thanks, P.T. Anderson.  You made one of the best movies of 2002, in under 5 hours and with Adam Sandler to boot. Not only that, but you found room on the soundtrack for Olive Oil. C.C. Baxter would be proud.  Okay, well, not proud, cause it’s just some movie, but maybe it would cheer him up some.  I know it did me.

Punch-Drunk Love: A
The Apartment:  A