It's not that the star is bringing anything new to the table, it's more he's refining all his previous skills into one uber-Sandler role.
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11/01/02
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Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
79
%
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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.
Theatrical Release:Oct 11, 2002 Limited
Box Office: $17,791,031
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
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Reviews for Punch-Drunk Love
A movie joyfully alive with possibility, from a filmmaker willing to take big gambles and force them to pay off, and with a star who has the courage to redefine his image.
10/31/02
...one of the best surprises this year.
10/31/02
...a visual song of vulnerability, with a rhythm vaulting from discord to harmony and back again in vibrating organic-colored tones, as if the whole film were breathing on its own.
10/30/02
...an angry, raw, shockingly beautiful romantic comedy that tests the limits of our every expectation.
10/29/02
PT Anderson successfuly uses his unlikely star to make the romantic comedy archtype into a horror film.
10/28/02
The film is too quirky and self-conscious for its own good, and never as clever as it seems to think it is.
10/28/02
I admire the film on many levels, particularly one: the performance of its leading man (of all people), Adam Sandler.
10/28/02
Both Sandler and Anderson are, it turns out, acutely attuned to the infinite, painful costs of consumer culture.
10/27/02
[A] strange and wonderful synthesis of two radically different styles.
10/27/02
Adam SANDLER! In an ART FILM!
10/27/02
Click to read the article
10/26/02
The journey toward redemption feels more like a cinematic experiment than a full-blown movie.
10/26/02
Top CriticDespite its title, Punch-Drunk Love is never heavy-handed. The jabs it employs are short, carefully placed and dead-center.
10/25/02
Top CriticAnderson's film beautifully captures the joy and tentativeness of new love.
10/25/02
Punch-Drunk Love mostly feints and jabs; by Anderson's standards it's strictly lightweight. But Sandler delivers the kind of knockout performance that even his staunchest defenders probably didn't realize he had in him.
10/25/02
[A] flukey mistake.
10/25/02
In the end, Punch-Drunk Love is one of those films that I wanted to like much more than I actually did. Sometimes, that's enough.
10/25/02
Compared to the full-course meals that are Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love is just an hors d'oeuvre. For Sandler, though, it's a Thanksgiving dinner.
10/25/02
Punch-Drunk Love is little more than a string of intermittently amusing peccadilloes passed off as a story.
10/25/02
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