On a whim, I picked up Punch Drunk Love at Movie Gallery
it was a free movie, and despite most of the things I've heard about it, I still wanted to give it a shot and at least see a movie I've been meaning to see for quite awhile. After pushing stop on my DVD player, I instantly realized what the movie did well, and where it fell short.
The major flaw behind the movie, aside from the strangeness, (but lets face it, are our lives really so normal in the first place?) was that it simple tried to accomplish too many tasks and pull itself in too many different directions without ever fully completing one. Probably the only section of the story that actually finished itself was the pudding loophole, as things tended to CONCLUDE. The newly found love between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson was never fully developed to allow the viewers to fully connect with the characters and their own connection towards one another. Instead, we see many scenes of utter awkwardness between the two, and in the end, they're magically in love.
However, on the flip side, Adam Sandler's character was very well developed and played out well, but I believe a run-of-the-mill American viewer isn't going to completely understand him or why he does the things that he does. With an extreme low self-confidence, he finds himself lashing against the world in all kinds of ways. The character himself is very deep and interesting, but due to the containing that the script called for, I don't think a lot of people will fully understand Sandler's character.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman absolutely rocks as a "villain", and if his part could have made more of an impact on the complete story, there may have been a little more substance in the end of it all. He is gradually becoming one of the actors that are placed very highly on my list.
In regards to the writing and directing of the film, Paul Thomas Anderson is of course the source of the "oddness" that may lead to the film disagreeing with viewers. He has a very unique style with pulling the camera far back and surveying the scene, even if its just a slummy area of LA. The writing was not on par at all with Magnolia, but I'm not going to hold it against him. If he just kept writing movies like that, we'd get nowhere in the movie industry, so I guess it is cool to see him branching off like this. Interesting shots are taken, and the use of the actors in front of a bright background is used to an extreme, which was cool, but also hindered the film as the repletion started to get annoying.
If the movie had pulled away and focused on one area, rather than spreading itself too thin, I believe it could have been better. But nevertheless, I still enjoyed it to an extent. On a whim, I picked up Punch Drunk Love at Movie Gallery it was a free movie, and despite most of the things I've heard about it, I still wanted to give it a shot and at least see a movie I've been meaning to see for quite awhile. After pushing stop on my DVD player, I instantly realized what the movie did well, and where it fell short.
The major flaw behind the movie, aside from the strangeness, (but lets face it, are our lives really so normal in the first place?) was that it simple tried to accomplish too many tasks and pull itself in too many different directions without ever fully completing one. Probably the only section of the story that actually finished itself was the pudding loophole, as things tended to CONCLUDE. The newly found love between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson was never fully developed to allow the viewers to fully connect with the characters and their own connection towards one another. Instead, we see many scenes of utter awkwardness between the two, and in the end, they're magically in love.
However, on the flip side, Adam Sandler's character was very well developed and played out well, but I believe a run-of-the-mill American viewer isn't going to completely understand him or why he does the things that he does. With an extreme low self-confidence, he finds himself lashing against the world in all kinds of ways. The character himself is very deep and interesting, but due to the containing that the script called for, I don't think a lot of people will fully understand Sandler's character.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman absolutely rocks as a "villain", and if his part could have made more of an impact on the complete story, there may have been a little more substance in the end of it all. He is gradually becoming one of the actors that are placed very highly on my list.
In regards to the writing and directing of the film, Paul Thomas Anderson is of course the source of the "oddness" that may lead to the film disagreeing with viewers. He has a very unique style with pulling the camera far back and surveying the scene, even if its just a slummy area of LA. The writing was not on par at all with Magnolia, but I'm not going to hold it against him. If he just kept writing movies like that, we'd get nowhere in the movie industry, so I guess it is cool to see him branching off like this. Interesting shots are taken, and the use of the actors in front of a bright background is used to an extreme, which was cool, but also hindered the film as the repletion started to get annoying.
If the movie had pulled away and focused on one area, rather than spreading itself too thin, I believe it could have been better. But nevertheless, I still enjoyed it to an extent.
The major flaw behind the movie, aside from the strangeness, (but lets face it, are our lives really so normal in the first place?) was that it simple tried to accomplish too many tasks and pull itself in too many different directions without ever fully completing one. Probably the only section of the story that actually finished itself was the pudding loophole, as things tended to CONCLUDE. The newly found love between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson was never fully developed to allow the viewers to fully connect with the characters and their own connection towards one another. Instead, we see many scenes of utter awkwardness between the two, and in the end, they're magically in love.
However, on the flip side, Adam Sandler's character was very well developed and played out well, but I believe a run-of-the-mill American viewer isn't going to completely understand him or why he does the things that he does. With an extreme low self-confidence, he finds himself lashing against the world in all kinds of ways. The character himself is very deep and interesting, but due to the containing that the script called for, I don't think a lot of people will fully understand Sandler's character.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman absolutely rocks as a "villain", and if his part could have made more of an impact on the complete story, there may have been a little more substance in the end of it all. He is gradually becoming one of the actors that are placed very highly on my list.
In regards to the writing and directing of the film, Paul Thomas Anderson is of course the source of the "oddness" that may lead to the film disagreeing with viewers. He has a very unique style with pulling the camera far back and surveying the scene, even if its just a slummy area of LA. The writing was not on par at all with Magnolia, but I'm not going to hold it against him. If he just kept writing movies like that, we'd get nowhere in the movie industry, so I guess it is cool to see him branching off like this. Interesting shots are taken, and the use of the actors in front of a bright background is used to an extreme, which was cool, but also hindered the film as the repletion started to get annoying.
If the movie had pulled away and focused on one area, rather than spreading itself too thin, I believe it could have been better. But nevertheless, I still enjoyed it to an extent. On a whim, I picked up Punch Drunk Love at Movie Gallery it was a free movie, and despite most of the things I've heard about it, I still wanted to give it a shot and at least see a movie I've been meaning to see for quite awhile. After pushing stop on my DVD player, I instantly realized what the movie did well, and where it fell short.
The major flaw behind the movie, aside from the strangeness, (but lets face it, are our lives really so normal in the first place?) was that it simple tried to accomplish too many tasks and pull itself in too many different directions without ever fully completing one. Probably the only section of the story that actually finished itself was the pudding loophole, as things tended to CONCLUDE. The newly found love between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson was never fully developed to allow the viewers to fully connect with the characters and their own connection towards one another. Instead, we see many scenes of utter awkwardness between the two, and in the end, they're magically in love.
However, on the flip side, Adam Sandler's character was very well developed and played out well, but I believe a run-of-the-mill American viewer isn't going to completely understand him or why he does the things that he does. With an extreme low self-confidence, he finds himself lashing against the world in all kinds of ways. The character himself is very deep and interesting, but due to the containing that the script called for, I don't think a lot of people will fully understand Sandler's character.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman absolutely rocks as a "villain", and if his part could have made more of an impact on the complete story, there may have been a little more substance in the end of it all. He is gradually becoming one of the actors that are placed very highly on my list.
In regards to the writing and directing of the film, Paul Thomas Anderson is of course the source of the "oddness" that may lead to the film disagreeing with viewers. He has a very unique style with pulling the camera far back and surveying the scene, even if its just a slummy area of LA. The writing was not on par at all with Magnolia, but I'm not going to hold it against him. If he just kept writing movies like that, we'd get nowhere in the movie industry, so I guess it is cool to see him branching off like this. Interesting shots are taken, and the use of the actors in front of a bright background is used to an extreme, which was cool, but also hindered the film as the repletion started to get annoying.
If the movie had pulled away and focused on one area, rather than spreading itself too thin, I believe it could have been better. But nevertheless, I still enjoyed it to an extent.