I saw Punch Drunk Love last night. I know, supposed to be a good movie. Or so they say.

First of all, love Boogie Nights. One of my favorite movies of all time. The director though, Paul Thomas Anthony Hall or whatever his name is, is getting way too cute for his own good. Enough with the magical random surrealistic occurrences. And random stuff going on in the background is occasionally cool, but not in every scene.

My main problem with the movie though is the whole romantic part of it. Which is kind of a problem since the movie is a romantic comedy (well, kind of, but that's another story.)

Years ago, I saw As Good As It Gets with my mother. Hated it. I sat there the whole time completely annoyed and pissed off that the Helen Hunt character would fall for the Jack Nicholson character. He was manic-obsessive, which is okay I guess, but he was kind of a jerk. Throughout the movie he never really stopped being a jerk and never showed any redeeming quality. Oh, and he was also about thirty years older than Helen Hunt, but it's Hollywood, so what are you gonna do about it? I kept on sitting there wondering how this could be considered romantic. He's a majorly screwed up character, so what does it say about the female lead if she winds up falling for the guy. I envisioned the sequel of the movie in which the Helen Hunt character goes on Sally Jesse Raphael for the "Women Who Make Bad Romantic Decisions" episode. When the movie ended, and while all the couples looked lovingly at each other and my mother looked all teary and sentimental, she noticed that I was scoffing. "Oh," she'd say, "you're just not a romantic." I am a romantic, it's just that the movie sucked.

Anyways, Punch Drunk Love was like that. The Adam Sandler character was part Rain-Man, part The Waterboy. Yeah, he was kind of a nice guy and lonely and a bit hapless and hen-pecked, but you never get to see him as anything but that. There's nothing there that makes you think, hey, there's a really great guy under there. And as the movie goes on and he falls in love, he never really changes. He's still Rain Man/Waterboy. Yet the female character falls madly in love with him because I guess she sees something in him nobody else does. Oh, and he comes from a big family and she's an only child.

I hate movies like that. There's no reason in the world why the Emily Watson character would fall for the Adam Sandler character. Keep in mind, at one point, when they're having a romantic moment, he tells her how much he'd like to smash her face in. And she giggles and thinks its cute. No woman would ever fall in love with someone like the Adam Sandler character.

And besides, it always ends happily ever after. The woman character never decides she just wants to be friends. Never comes out a week later and says she's going through a lot and has suddenly decided that she's not in a good space for a relationship. Or just got together with an old boyfriend or still heartbroken over the last one or realizes that it can't work out because the guy is too dark or doesn't back them up after every neurotic breakdown or only liked them because they thought they were bi when they're so totally not.

Damnit, I wanna see a realistic romantic movie.