The Onion Strikes Again
Posted: June 26th, 2008 | Author: Sam | Filed under: Blog Posts |Earlier this week, I posted this criticism of The Onion’s AV Club. Coming later today: a podcast about this particular subject. Then they decide to tackle Punch-Drunk Love, one of my favorite movies.
Ignore the condescension to Adam Sandler’s career; love him or hate him, Sandler’s movies have made millions because he has a devoted fanbase. As for the reviewer, Scott Tobias, this is all you need to know:
It would be wrong to say that P.T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is the Adam Sandler movie for people who hate Adam Sandler movies. (Though that sentiment definitely applies to me.)
Got it? Scott Tobias hates Adam Sandler movies. He wants to make that clear, lest his street cred amongst the hipsters be dinged by the merest though existing that he enjoyed Happy Gilmore or Spanglish. (Speaking of Sandler hater Tobias, here’s what he wrote about the actor’s turn in the aforementioned Spanglish:
Sandler proves to be a gratifyingly unpredictable leading man, self-effacing one moment and hilariously emphatic the other.
Same reviewer. But remember, he hates Sandler movies…)
Oddly, for a man who reviews movies (and claims to hate actors that he has previously praised) for a living, his work here left me confused. Did we watch the same movie? It’s his discussion of Emily Watson that’s particularly bizarre. He describes her as “Magic Pixie Dream Girl” because she inexplicably tolerates Adam Sandler’s existence. He never seems to consider the following:
1. He finds it unbelievable that Emily Watson would find Sandler. He owns his own business. He seems loyal throughout the movie, even to his sisters who mistreat him. He protects the harmonium. He acknowledges his psychiatric liabilities. She enjoys his pillow talk. He seeks to protect her, even if he screws it up. He is trustworthy.
2. Watson’s character is as off as Sandler is. She’s not on the level. She trusts him with her car at the very beginning of the movie. She engages in the same sort of pillowtalk that he does. She isn’t put off by Sandler’s arrival in Hawaii after what, one date? She recognizes that his sisters treat him terribly.
3. He tries to fix his mistakes. He isn’t forward with her. She kisses him. He only reaches out for her hand on the way back to her hotel room. He is seemingly gentle with her, as with the harmonium.
The point of this is that the movie must be seen quite differently if your frame of reference is the awful Elizabethtown, as seems to have been Tobias’s. But in Punch-Drunk Love, Sandler and Watson come together because they are male and female versions of one another: both psychologically fragile, both wanting of companionship, and both loyal. It isn’t Watson doing Sandler a service; it’s love.
I don’t know how somebody with such critical pedigree could have missed something like that.
So here’s the thing: I genuinely don’t like Adam Sandler’s work most of the time. That’s not a pose; it’s my actual opinion. More to the point, I find him a pretty impenetrable screen presence, someone who’s burrowed so deep in his comedic persona (the angry man-child, basically) that it’s hard to access the person behind the schtick. (Spanglish is probably the one time that he softened up a little and I think it’s his best performance, though I like PDL a lot more overall.)
As for Emily Watson, I think you have a point. I’ve probably underestimated the extent to which Watson is herself a fragile, lonely person and needs someone like Sandler, despite the use of the song “*He* Needs Me,” which strongly suggests her maternal role in comforting this very disturbed and sad man. But this romance does seem, at least for a time, like a fantasy: She’s eternally patient and forgiving of his chaotic life (e.g. the scene where she reintroduces herself to him at the warehouse) and his blunders (e.g. destroying the restaurant bathroom, abandoning her at the hospital after the accident). And what does he have to offer? A pudding scheme and a bizarre and long-winded monologue about a morning DJ bit on the radio.
Nevertheless, I do finally concede in the piece that the relationship makes an odd sort of sense in the end, and I was ultimately moved by it. (Unlike Elizabethtown, say) I’m just not convinced that it’s perfectly balanced.
Anyway, thanks for reading the piece so closely. And thanks for reading us in general, despite your ambivalence about our work sometimes.
It’s totally off-balanced. Sandler’s character is far stranger and less stable than Watson’s, evidenced by his violent outbursts and unpredictable behavior. Watson has no parallels to these. It’s plausible that they could be together, and in love, but it’s not like Sandler’s character is some prize for hers.
You can hardly blame PDL for that, though, since it’s a chronic problem with popular films in general. Male leads are constantly winning the hearts of women who have basically no reason at all to be attracted to them. Elizabethtown is a fantastic example of that. A female lead character has to be attractive and clever, whereas her male counterpart just has to show up.
Stewart,
We are friends, but I completely disagree. I actually briefly emailed with Scott Tobias about this, so I’ll lay out the same argument again:
1. His behavior isn’t unpredictable. Whenever he feels cornered or overwhelmed, he lashes out. This happens at both the restaurant and at his (awful) sister’s house.
2. Sandler is the boss of his company, not just a manager. He has built his own business. This is appealing, as is his loyalty and refusal to trample on others. He clearly won’t trample on Watson’s.
3. Watson engages in the same pillow talk he does. She also is a shut-in who refuses to leave her Hawaii hotelroom until Sandler arrives.
4. Her problems are more internal - where as Sandler lashes outward, Watson remains inward. Both both are on equally shaky psychological footing, which is why they find comfort in each other.
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