Punch-Drunk Love

Barry Egan runs a small business selling novelty bathroom goods, and his life is dominated by seven sisters who call constantly and treat him as a child. Their teasing and interference have left him awkward around people and prone to sudden bursts of rage. After one family gathering ends with him smashing the glass doors of a sister's house, he calls a phone-sex line and gives the operator his card details, which sets off a campaign of intimidation by a group of extortionists. Around the same time, a woman named Lena Leonard enters his life, and their cautious courtship becomes the film's central thread.

Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed Punch-Drunk Love, his fifth feature, arriving between Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. Adam Sandler plays Barry, with Emily Watson as Lena, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the extortionist Dean Trumbell and Luis Guzmán as Lance. The film was released in October 2002, runs 96 minutes and cost about 25 million dollars; it took in roughly the same amount worldwide, so it did not grow beyond its budget at the box office. It holds a 7.3 rating on IMDb from about 197,000 votes and a 7.1 on TMDB from far fewer votes, while the critics' rating stands at 7.7 from 202 reviews.