BY LARRY CARROLL | Wow. I have not been this disappointed in a movie in a long time. I believe (and would still like to) that Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most talented young directors in the business  Id consider Boogie Nights and Magnolia to be in the top fifty films of the last ten years, and Hard Eight might just make the cut if I was asked to list a hundred. Adam Sandler (Mr. Deeds), meanwhile, might be a punching bag for many critics, but Ive always thought he was funny, charming, and had a cant-fake guy-next-door quality to him that was just screaming for a good director to come along and properly harness it. I really could not wait to see these two work together.

When news spread around the Internet that P.T. Anderson was casting Sandler in his next film, Punch-Drunk Love, it instantly became one of the brightest spots on my radar. But, as I sat there in the theater the other night, watching scene after scene pass, wondering when it was going to start getting good, I slowly came to the realization that this was a bad movie. I couldnt believe it. As I write this review, Im still in a state of shock, as if a Directors Cut VHS is going to arrive at my doorstep for me to pop into the VCR and see the real version of Punch Drunk Love -the good one.

It all starts promisingly enough, with Barry Egan (Sandler) sitting at a desk in an empty office, discussing a crazy scheme hes cooked up to redeem proofs-of-purchase for frequent flyer miles. Beautifully shot (weve come to expect no less from Anderson), the camera follows Barry outside his warehouse and into an alley. Looking down the road at nothing in particular, a car launches itself into the air and slams down hard on the pavement in what looks to be a very grave accident. But rather than turning the camera on the wreck that is now further down the street, Anderson keeps the eyes of Barry and the audience straight ahead. A van pulls up, and for no reason at all, drops off a strange little piano on the side of the road. Instead of turning his head slightly to see if he could possibly save the life of a person by making a phone call or, at the very least, comfort the driver in the final moments of his or her life, Egan does nothing.

There are two problems here, and were only five minutes into the movie. First off, if either one of those two happenings occurred to us, it would be a bizarre event, the type that wed bring up in conversations for months, if not years to come. Have you ever seen a brutal car accident from a few feet away that could have possibly killed you? Have you ever had a van pull up for no reason and drop a strange little piano in front of you? My point isnt that these things couldnt happen, its just that there is a fine line between eccentric little coincidence weird enough to be real and absurd, illogical moment that undermines whatever the scene is supposed to achieve and when you pile two into the same scene your credibility is going to go flying right out the window. I realize that Im saying this about a man who once dropped frogs from the sky, but those frogs were believable because he earned that suspension of disbelief. He earned it in Magnolia by giving us strong, powerful, real characters that were united in a magical movie moment presented just strangely enough to make us believe that it could happen. The second problem with the scene is that it makes Barry look like an insensitive, self-centered jerk. If that were consistent with the rest of the film, then this might be an apt set-up. But for the next ninety minutes, Anderson reminds us time and again what a tender, sensitive guy Barry is, how hes shell-shocked from a lifetime of abuse by his many sisters, and how hes just a sweet guy looking for a woman to love.

This isnt the only way that Barry seems to change from scene to scene depending on what the character needs to do in order to service the plot. At the beginning of the film, he seems sheepish and timid, then along comes a scene that has him violently rip a bathroom apart with a brutal strength that most men only wish they could summon from time to time. The point of it all seems to be some commentary on how, when Punch-Drunk Love drops Barry into a romance with a girl named Lena (Emily Watson, Red Dragon), it infuses him with a kind of superhuman quality that finally lets him stand up for himself. But if this is the case, then why do some thugs easily punch him out after hes already met Lena? Maybe they hadnt kissed yet at that point, and its her affirmation of their love that gives him strength  sure Id buy that  but he hadnt kissed her when he tore up the bathroom either, and he seemed to be pretty strong then.

Similarly, Barry is smart enough to own his own business and figure out a pudding scam that we could assume a whole team of frozen food execs had overlooked, yet dumb enough to call up some robbers and ask for them to give back the money they took from him. Maybe Anderson has some secret code to it all that he just doesnt want to share with us. Youll find yourself trying to come up with explanations, trying to make excuses for the sloppiness of the characters and the way they act. But you shouldnt have to do that. For Anderson to spell everything out to the audience would certainly be a mistake, but if hes going to leave some ambiguity he should at least be consistent enough in his details that we can string a theory together.

What you end up getting with Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie thats too inappropriately goofy (Sandler jumps face first into the street, takes an unattached phone receiver all the way to Utah from LA because he doesnt realize he has it, etc.) to be as touching as the director wants it to be, and an Adam Sandler movie thats too awkwardly grave (Watson gets sent to the hospital, Sandler breaks down in tears) to succeed as one of his usual comedies. Rather than a collaboration, the film turns out to be a turf battle between the two talents, and both of them just end up beating each other bloody.

If Sandler is running around, saying strange things and beating people up for most of the movie, then how is Barry Egan really any different than Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, or Longfellow Deeds? For anyone who normally slams his films to call for an Oscar over this is (supposedly some are) is nothing short of hypocritical. Hes giving the same performance as he has so many times in the past, but the difference here is that his director is filming it in a more cinematic fashion and throwing in enough hmmm moments to make it seem weightier than, say, The Waterboy. If Anderson is sincerely trying to give us something different from his usual fare, then why do we get so many attempts at the strange coincidences, bizarre sex-craved characters and wild camera tricks that were hallmarks (and worked much better) in his other movies? It saddens me to report it, but these two were just not meant to be together, and when you try to mix them its like oil and vinegar.

Which brings me to the love story that is the centerpiece of the entire film. Barry and Lena meet, have some awkward moments together, lie to each other a few times, then supposedly fall into a deep, powerful love whose grasp neither could escape from even if they tried. Its yet another movie trying to force us to believe that weve watched two people fall into the romance of a lifetime by just telling us over and over again that they are in love. Let me offer up a word of unsolicited advice for Anderson and any other screenwriters out there: unless you can create a minimum of three great love scenes, scenes that will make every woman in the audience think, I can see why a girl would love that guy and every guy think the same about the female lead, then dont even bother. Not every movie needs to have a love story, not every person in the world is in love, tell one of their stories instead  if you cant make us fall in love with the characters, then dont try to twist our arms until we believe that they love each other.

Punch-Drunk Love does have three great things going for it: the shocking realness of the way that opening car accident is shot (but that still doesnt redeem the scene), the downright ballsy revival of He Needs Me (a great old song from Robert Altmans oft-derided 1980 Popeye film), and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman (Almost Famous), playing a bottom-feeding scam artist/mattress salesman named Dean, lights up the film every time he gets on camera. In fact, its the performance of Hoffman that keeps the hope alive, up until the final scene, that Punch-Drunk Love will finally start getting better. But it never does.

One more thing that stumps me about this movie is the almost criminal neglect of Luis Guzman (Out of Sight), who appears in the movie as Barrys employee. A very talented and funny actor who has served Anderson well in the past, the poor guy must have a page and a half of lines in the whole movie, and the majority of those are, Where are you going, Barry? or, What are you doing, Barry?. Theres one scene when Sandler asks Guzman to come into his office with him, and he starts to vent, and you think that finally the underused actor will get to do something. Instead the phone distracts the boss, Guzman leaves without saying anything of substance, and then (of course) Adam Sandler punches something.

Its one thing for a movie to flat out suck  give me a million Corky Romanos and Glitters and Bad Companys and at least Ill know, every time Im going into them, what Im probably going to get and then judge it in relation to other low-aiming entertainment. But its another when a movie is just good enough to taunt you, just showing you enough moments that flirt with greatness to remind you of what it should have been. When Paul Thomas Anderson frames a gorgeous silhouetted shot in a doorway with two lovers embracing, or Adam Sandler shows us a glorious, demented little dance in a supermarket, its a tease. It just makes you wish there was something substantial behind these images. I still think that Sandler could be properly tutored by some director someday to make a move into dramas and be a success along the same lines as Jim Carrey or Robin Williams. I also think that Anderson will have no problem recovering from this movie to go on to have a very substantial career. But the quicker they both put this film in their rearview mirrors, the better.

When Magnolia came out a few years ago, a lot of people complained that it was too long. A lot of critics and audience members accused Paul Thomas Anderson of being too self-indulgent to edit his own work down to a manageable length. This new movie clocks in at ninety-seven minutes, roughly half the running time of Magnolia. The sad truth is, however, that it is so frustrating, so poorly done, so disappointing, that watching Magnolia three times back to back would fly by like a Three Stooges short compared to one more viewing of Punch-Drunk Love.

GRADE: C