Product Details

• Actors: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Andrews, Don McManus
• Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson
• Writers: Paul Thomas Anderson
• Producers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi, Daniel P. Collins, JoAnne Sellar
• Format: DTS Surround Sound, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen, Special Edition, Color
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1 EX), English (DTS 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Dubbed: French
• Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click .
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: June 24, 2003
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (388 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000G02H
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,110 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Punch-Drunk Love (Two-Disc Special Edition)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Adam Sandler takes a shot at critical respectability with Punch-Drunk Love, a movie by director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Sandler plays Barry Egan, a lonely small businessman who calls a phone sex line one night, only to find himself the victim of an extortion scheme the next day--the very same day on which he goes out on a date with the woman who may be the love of his life (the utterly delightful Emily Watson). Barry is a lot like Sandler's popular comic characters--socially maladept, prone to violence, always on the brink of embarrassment--but here Sandler plays it real; the result is both off-putting and sympathetic. Anderson's writing skills, unfortunately, are not as strong as his visual sense. Punch-Drunk Love has many strengths (including great supporting actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzmán), but ultimately fizzles out. --Bret Fetzer

Product Description

The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent Quirky Psychotic Vio-love!! October 21, 2002

By Derek Martin

This movie was, in two words, entirely unique.

They're promoting it as a 'romantic comedy' -- because there's no category called 'psychotic affair with undertones of love and violent outbursts'.

Much like Magnolia (the director's previous film), this is unlike any film you've ever seen.

Adam Sandler does an excellent job of playing an unremarkable plunger salesman -- Barry Egan. There is nothing special about this guy. He has the odd phobia, and is a little paranoid and superstitious, but is generally an all-around nice guy... if a little temperamental. An average American.

He is also painfully lonely; so much so, in fact, that one day he calls a 1-800 sex line just so he can talk to someone...

The soundtrack & audio in the film are integral to the experience of it, which is completely unnerving.
It definitely arouses feelings in the audience -- mostly of unease, and awkwardness... and I laughed many times because of the absurdity of the situations -- all of which were completely intentional on the director's part (Paul Thomas Anderson).

Amazing, unique film.
It is NOT what you're expecting... no matter what.

73 of 82 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone, no matter how damaged, deserves love. December 18, 2002

By Benjamin

On Saturday, I saw one of the most obscure, bizarre, different and ultimately conventional and rewarding films, and I have to recommend it to all of you.

It's the Adam Sandler-Paul Thomas Anderson movie, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE.

Usually, with Adam Sandler, I'm on the fence. I remember him from when he was on REMOTE CONTROL when I was 12. I remember him when he started on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and I loved his skit there called THE DENISE SHOW, where a dumped, depressed guy uses a cable access program as an excuse to stalk his ex-girlfriend. P.T. Anderson, I noticed from interviews, remembered Sandler from THE DENISE SHOW, too, and made this movie with the complexities and sadness that character in mind.

All the rage (not range) that Sandler showed in films like THE WEDDING SINGER, which at times was smart and good, or THE WATERBOY, which at times was dumb and good, is on display in PUNCH-DRUNK, but Sandler's character, Barry Egan, is more awkward than goofy. He's shy, damaged, browbeaten. In his words, he "doesn't like himself very much sometimes."

In the role, Sandler's able to maintain his character's oddness, manic temper (complete with fits of violence) and essential goodness, generating sympathy and care even when he does things like call a phone-sex line or destroy a restaurant bathroom.

As I've watched more Paul Thomas Anderson films in an attempt to better understand them (for MAGNOLIA frequently left me baffled and confused), I've come to appreciate some recurring elements: twists of fate that inject magic into everyday life, characters that exist only to forgive and love the damaged characters and random, off-the-wall dialogue and plot twists.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE has these. Its hokiness, for it is a somewhat-formula romantic comedy, is redeemed by these elements....

Lena Leonard, played by Emily Watson, is the character whose sole purpose in the film is to unconditionally love Barry Egan. The character isn't as clearly defined or quirky as Sandler's because she exists for a sole purpose, to save Egan from himself, to teach him how to hold relationships with others, to trust others, because she almost instinctively understands that he's been hurt a lot and hasn't really deserved it.

The arrival of Leonard in Barry's life coincides with the arrival, as well, of a harmonium on his doorstep. The harmonium, one of those air-organ type instruments, shows up by complete chance, and its arrival, strangely, initially frightens Barry. Yet, as he comes to accept it and learns how to play it, everything else in Barry's life comes into order.

I loved this movie so much that I wanted to give it a hug. It's not laugh-out-loud funny. It probably won't appeal to a lot of people. Some people may find it too off-the-wall. Others may just not get it.

But I embrace any film that understands its themes clearly, knows what it's trying to say and says just that. I don't even mind a happy ending if a film earns it.

Through accepting that goodness and magic does occur in the world and that the world isn't all hurt, Barry Egan is able to accept that there is goodness inside him and that he deserves love.

I thought that was pretty great. Read more ›

107 of 126 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepiest Romance Ever January 5, 2003

By John Bliss

The first half of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, "Punch-Drunk Love," is one of the most unsettling experiences I've had in a movie theater in some time.

Within the opening minutes, Barry Egan, the character played by Adam Sandler, witnesses a horrific accident, in which a car spins over and comes apart, has a taxivan screech to a halt while an unseen passenger drops a harmonium onto the street in front of him, and then, while he is rescuing said harmonium from the street, is almost killed by a speeding 18-wheeler. Is it any surprise that he dashes into the warehouse where he works and peers out at the world in terror?

"Punch Drunk Love" has been described as a "strange romantic comedy," as "quirky" and "eccentric." In truth, the comedy is pitch-black and the romance is as dysfunctional as in any of Anderson's movie. It's a barely lightened version of the romance between John C. Reilly and Melora Walters in "Magnolia." We see how crippled Sandler's character is, but only get hints of the traumas suffered by Emily Watson, as his counterpart, the strongest of which is that she falls for him.

Sandler's Egan is such an emotional cripple that he stumbles through the world as if he is mentally challenged. This is not standard issue "Little Nicky". This is "The Waterboy" as lensed by Hitchcock, and just as horrifying. Anderson builds the tension in Egan's day, so that when he finally has an outburst at his sister's birthday party, after a scene that is emotionally nerve-wracking, we are grateful for the release. That this release is followed by uncontrolled weeping, all of which is played completely straight, both deepens our understanding of Egan and reassures our trust in the director and his star....

The movie is indeed funny at times, but for all its laughs, much of the time it plays as a horror film, in the tradition of "Eraserhead." Though far more realistic in treatment, Barry Egan is a direct descendant of Henry Spencer, stumbling through a world he can barely comprehend and paying the price for every transgression. Anderson plays on our fears about family and sex, and when Egan calls a 900 number, more for company than sex (he doesn't realize he should be masturbating), it turns into his worst nightmare. The movie ends on what should be a positive note, but it's so desperate that it's hard to feel good.

Despite the reviews the movie is not an Art House film, any more than Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" is an Art House film. It is a genre picture that steps out of the genre, intelligent, creative and confident - in other words, something apart from standard Hollywood fare. Anderson uses music, light and sound much more to his advantage than many directors, creating an emotional context that helps support his story. His use of color and light is particularly effective, as when a pay phone suddenly glows when a call is connected, or when the lovers kiss in silhouette while a parade of strangers pass behind them.

This is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie starring Adam Sandler, not an Adam Sandler movie directed by P.T. Anderson. As in many of his films, Sandler explodes in fits of violence. Unlike his other films, the violence doesn't seem choreographed. In one scene, he "beats up a bathroom," and it looks like we're watching outtakes: things don't break or they break too easily, there's no build, there's no catharsis. We don't feel better after Sandler's explosions, we feel unnerved. Sandler literally runs through much of the movie, but there's nothing freeing about it. There is one moment of simple joy, when Egan dances an impromptu soft-shoe in a supermarket. It's the only time he seems at all comfortable in his own skin. This movie is Adam Sandler's "Phantom of the Opera." He pulls off the mask and shows the horror beneath. And that makes him the most sympathetic he's ever been. Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Who is Adam Sandler? March 25, 2008

By K. Driscoll VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

Paul Thomas Anderson is either hit or miss with me. I liked Hard Eight, I loved Boogie Nights, but I really thought he lost his way with Magnolia. That isn't to say I can't recognize that he is immensely talented and I'm looking forward to seeing his latest film There Will Be Blood. Punch-Drunk Love is a smaller movie about Barry Egan, a business owner who sells novelty items such as stylized toilet plungers. Everything about Barry Egan permeates with a kind of frustrating sadness. His seven older sisters constantly insult him and his life is consistently portrayed as minimalist and disassociated. He is a profoundly lonely man. His bizarre social behavior is awkward but at times spirals into both perversion as well as intensely violent fits of rage. All the while, he is portrayed as the film's protagonist. Anderson is especially delicate in making us understand his eccentricities as justifiable survival mechanisms within the paradigm of his uncomfortable past and nearly pathetic current life. Anderson is careful not to mock or exploit Egan for his faults.

Who could play such a unique and intriguing character? I have to admit, I'm a big fan of Adam Sandler's early comedies. Especially Billy Madison and I don't care who knows about it. I love the silly and stupid humor of Adam Sandler and I firmly believe it is what put him on the map.... But he was just a character in those early films and besides those films really are just a series of comedy sketches. It would've made more sense if Billy Madison were placed into a CGI world, a cartoon, or a comic book in the first place. He continued to be silly all along but his characters always carried this dark side that wasn't easy to pinpoint among the poop jokes and slap-stick. He was almost like Adam West's Batman was in the old television show and how we see Batman now in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies is how we see Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. It is as if Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore were snatched away from the unrealistic comedic worlds of those respective films and aggressively forced to exist in the real world, where every scene isn't necessarily working toward a punch-line. Although, much of Barry Egan's behavior in the real world is, at least on the surface, not unlike the behavior of Madison and Gilmore.

The most amazing thing about the whole Sandler dynamic is that he can really act. He stands toe-to-toe with Phillip Seymour Hoffman (an Anderson regular who happens to be an amazing actor) in my favorite scene of the movie, where these two angry idiots just scream back and forth at each other over the phone. The scene makes their later encounter in person an amazing confrontation. Every single scene Sandler is in we tend to feel for the people around him. Knowing what his temper is capable of made me uncomfortable for the people who surround him but especially uncomfortable for Egan himself, who seemingly can't settle into his own skin. He does seem to find some comfort around Lena (Emily Watson), whose relationship with Barry is really what the film is intent on seeing through.

Punch-Drunk Love has a great style. Anderson has a way of making ordinary scenes memorable and important scenes extraordinary. He is a also a great writer and makes even the smallest characters as strong as his leads. The soundtrack is of course the perfect fit as well. In the end and most important of all, Anderson tries hard to allow us the pleasure of watching Barry Egan bring some kind of comfort into his troubled life and I for one was surprised to enjoy it as much as I did. Read more ›