Paul Thomas Anderson can be liked or disliked, but he cannot be boring. From a hard-boiled Hard Eight to porn family saga Boogie Nights to the Altmanesque Magnolia, Anderson has been gnawing and thrashing at the familiar movie genres; his motto seems to be, Anything but the Obvious. Like many, I fell for the tough warmth of Boogie Nights, but the frenetic camera of Magnolia made me uncomfortable, and I was hoping that this was not what the director had in mind. Now, emboldened by the success of his previous two films, Anderson has ventured into a different genre -- comedy. Ouch. Woody Allen tried to make a musical once -- remember? I am not suggesting that all comedy should return to the Billy Wilder standard, with its sharply defined adults cracking one sock-'em line after another. There's a need for American Pie-type movies, and God bless them. What is not clear is why a director with such consummate skills and smarts as Anderson chose to make a film that is a Water Boy on LSD. (This is NOT meant as a compliment, by the way: a really good film should be enjoyed with or without a little help from your friends.) The film's beginning is encouraging: in an otherwise empty warehouse, a man in a bright-blue suit is seated at a desk, conducting one of those terminally inane conversations with a customer rep about mileage coupons. Dissatisfied, the man steps outside: we realize it is just before dawn. A car barrels at breakneck speed on an otherwise empty street (San Fernando Valley, Anderson's bailiwick, I assume), rolls over, crashes, and disappears -- all in the wink of an eye. Before our hero had a chance to catch his breath, a cab pulls up to the curb, and a harmonium (a mini-piano) is unloaded and set on the curb. Then the cab tears away, just as violently. Shocked, the hero returns to his empty warehouse. Pretty good so far, huh? I mean, this is a real antipasto thick with images to make your mouth water for what's to come. A perfect trailer for an art-house movie. But you must have seen the real trailer, and it should suggest you should not set your sights too high. Okay, so this is Mr. Anderson's way of telling us the man in the blue suit's life is about to change. Violently. What follows is more flashy images -- a regular smorgasbord -- and forgettable dialogue. Barry Egan, the man in the blue suit (Adam Sandler), is a nerd to the nth degree, the kind that exists primarily in the minds of really hip filmmakers: he sells bathroom appliances, he buys a ton of chocolate pudding for the sake of airline mileage without having ever set foot on a plane, he has seven sisters who alternate between putting him down and fixing him up, and he has a mean temper that has him punching the wall -- literally. Hence the title, one of the half-baked ideas that Anderson conceived but couldn't quite decide what to do with. The plot, silly as it is, runs on two tracks. First, there's an adorable Lana Leonard (Emily Watson of Breaking the Waves) who for a completely mysterious reason falls for our nebbish. Second, one night Barry makes a sex-by-phone call, and the nasty girl decides to blackmail him. At first, he meekly gives in, but when the two tracks converge, and Emily becomes the collateral damage, the heretofore hidden temper blows up, and Barry's fists find a worthy target. Each track offers as much semblance to life as the opening sequence. We're supposed to believe that Barry is too much ashamed of having made the sex call to go to the police. Then we're supposed to believe that Lana actually sees something in him -- what is it? And who is she, anyway? She's a cipher, but it's not supposed to matter in Mr. Anderson's universe: a nerd gets his princess without asking her too many questions and getting too deeply into the why's. What does matter is the visual fireworks, which are numerous, and mostly clever. Why Adam Sandler for the lead? If Mr. Anderson tried to reach out to Mr. Sandler's numerous fans, he succeeded. Did Mr. Sandler make a successful transition from a party clown to a leading romantic man? Only in Mr. Anderson's fairy-tale world, which is quite removed from the one you and I know. It's the kind of fairy tale where the blackmail ringleader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a manager at a mattress store. Mr. Hoffman has always treaded lightly the line between drama and slapstick, but this time he threw caution to the winds and plunged into open farce. He looks like he enjoyed himself; I didn't. Mr. Anderson's style is markedly different from that of another bright new Anderson -- Wes (Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums) -- but the two share the same weakness so prominent in their both latest offerings. Just like The Royal Tenenbaums opted for gimmicks in lieu of characters, so does Punch Drunk Love sabotage the genre without offering us anything substantial in its place. It's like that harmonium that appears in the opening sequence and travels from scene to scene. It's supposed to mean something, but does it really? [rating: 1.5 of 4 stars] Studio Web site: Columbia Pictures Movie Web site: Punch-Drunk Love     Photo credits: © 2002 Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.