''Punch-Drunk Love: (Jon Brion) In an attempt to take his career down a road to serious audience consideration of a dramatic nature, Adam Sandler stars in this film by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who was the (questionable) visionary behind Boogie Nights and Magnolia. The plot of Punch-Drunk Love involves an inept salesman who gets caught up in a phone sex extortion scheme while attempting to woo the love of his life, and even if that premise alone doesn't seem strange enough, we'll just leave it there. While the arthouse-style film was generally regarded as a colorful and visually spectacular effort, Anderson's writing for the picture left much to be desired, and it managed to repulse many critics in the process of also confusing audiences. Punch-Drunk Love exists in a musical limbo area, not demanding a score of any one particular type of Hollywood norm, and what Anderson ended up requesting was an approach similar to that of Magnolia, for which Aimee Mann had written cultishly popular song material. In its general character, Punch-Drunk Love plays in the construct of an old musical formula, but the production doesn't allow the music to take that line directly. Composer Jon Brion, as advertised, evokes percussive elements from Lou Harrison, Jon Cage, Spike Jones, and Rosie the Riveter. If this sounds like unfamiliar ground for most film score collectors, then prepare for the equation to get even stranger. The film's dreamy, almost drug-induced atmosphere translates without any deviation into the personality of the score, with Brion merging a seemingly haphazard mismatch of several musical genres into one nearly psychotic package. A vintage Hawaiian style is revived in Punch-Drunk Love, but like the film, you can't determine if that 1960's/early 1970's style of lazy pop-kitsch is being mocked or affectionately resurrected in a positive light. At times you'll be erroneously convinced that Brion was attempting to create an atmosphere of parody. So convoluted is this score's overarching flow (despite the obvious intent to adapt well known songs into a song and score mix) that you sometimes can't figuring out what Brion was trying to do at all. Depending on your expectations, that might be a good thing, but if you require cohesion at any level in your soundtracks, and you have no tolerance for extreme synthetic manipulation of sound effects in your music, then you may as well quit reading here.'' Filmtracks