MOVIE REVIEW

Anger Management  (2003)

Starring: Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei
Director: Peter Segal

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Sony Pictures

Review Posted: 4.12.03

Spoilers: Minor/Major

By Sara Michelle Fetters

"Sandler and Nicholson Manage a Funny Mess"

The world is about to end. I know it. I feel it. Mark my words – this just might be the last review I ever write.

Why? I just watched an Adam Sandler comedy – and no P.T. Anderson’s luminous Punch-Drunk Love does not fit that description – and actually sort of enjoyed myself. Granted, that’s not exactly the strongest recommendation I’ve ever made for a film. But when talking about Sandler and in comparison to his other train wrecks that inexplicably pass themselves off as movies. That’s like giving the actor an Academy Award. And with Anger Management, Sandler has finally made a movie that I laughed with.

Dave Buznik (Sandler) is the same inner man-child the comic has been playing for years. At heart a decent human being but inside angry and dissatisfied, the executive assistant for a pet clothing manufacturer is on the verge of having a very bad day. On a flight to meet his boss he’s wrongly sat next to a particularly unruly passenger and inexplicably accused of causing a ruckus with a flight attendant and an air Marshall over a pair of headphones.

Back on land and with the stewardess sporting a somehow dislocated arm, Dave’s sentenced to 20-hours of anger management training by a particularly stringent judge (Lynne Thigpen). It is at this first session he formally meets Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), his anger management therapist and the same unruly passenger whom unwittingly led to his in-flight mess.

At first, Rydell seems willing to take the cat clothier’s side and sign his release papers after only one session, but as the evening progresses, Buddy comes to believe Dave might be more in need than he first thought. Explaining to him the difference between “explosive” and "implosive" anger, the doctor recommends double the allotted anger management training and assigns him a particularly unstable "anger buddy" in Chuck (John Turturro, again proving to be the funniest thing inside a Sandler comedy).

Soon Dave finds himself back before the judge for inadvertently beating up a waitress and tangling with a blind man (Harry Dean Stanton – why I have no idea) and looking face-first at a year of penal servitude. Instead, however, she sentences him to 30-days of strict, round-the-clock training with Dr. Rydell, saying in no uncertain terms that this is a last chance for the meek and amazingly unlucky Buznik.

Within hours Buddy has moved into Dave’s apartment, thrown away all his angry music (bye-bye Carpenters) and shown his affinity for sleeping in his birthday suit. But this is only the beginning. What follows is a self-exploration that includes dropping cars, fist-fighting Buddhists, a German pre-operative transsexual hooker, a brownie-throwing she-devil and a traffic jam causing sing-along of West Side Story’s "I Feel Pretty." What’s worse, when all is said and done Dave’s sure Buddy has no interest in helping him, his only real plan all along being to woo and win away his girlfriend Linda (Marisa Tomei) away from him.

As per all of Sandler’s comedies, this one seems to have directed itself. Peter Segal, the man responsible for inflicting The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps and Tommy Boy upon the world, seems to be making this movie as if instructed by paint-by-numbers. Scenes don’t so much as flow together as so much stick haphazardly at the hinges if stuck there by super glue. Anger Management jerks along like Yugo desperately in need of a tune up, and Segal hasn’t a clue as to how to fix the transmission.

It doesn’t help that David Dorfman’s script is tired, grotesquely homophobic and relies far too heavily on potty humor to be entirely successful. Dave’s basic problem is that he has a tiny, um, instrument, and this inadequacy has made him the submissive and self-loathing man he is today. While I can understand the eternal male obsession with size (it’s how you use it guys, not the size that matters), the fact that every guy in the film seems to be hung like an African Rhino gets a bit old after a while. Besides, not everything in life revolves around sex, but when watching most of Sandler’s comedies you sure would think so.

Now, after all this ranting, why am I about to say none of it really matters? Because, decent writing and directing be damned, Anger Management is funny. For all his faults as a director, and trust me he has plenty; Segal does plan a couple clever sight gags, chief amongst them that rampaging gaggle of Buddhists. And while Dorfman’s scripts borders this side of being offensive most of the time, he still manages an inspired central conceit that’s undeniably amusing.

What more, Sandler somehow manages to attract supporting actors the likes of which no one else in comedy can. How, I’m not really sure (it’s not like the movies are actually good), but here he is at it again with Tomei, Turturro, Luis Guzmán, Heather Graham, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Nealon, John C. Reilly, Bobby Knight, John McEnroe, the Yankees and Rudolph Giuliani all turning up in supporting roles. If you’ve ever wanted to see the former mayor of New York shout, “Give her a 5-second Frencher,” then this is the movie for you.

But what really makes Anger Management click is the über-hyped dynamic between Sandler and Nicholson. While there isn’t nothing new going on with either of them – Sandler is essentially playing the same character he always does and Nicholson is just doing another variation on his psychotic horny devil routine – they still manage to have surprisingly excellent chemistry and work off one another extremely well.

Granted, it is no surprise that as easy as Sandler is to watch and as good a grasp he has on his character, Anger Management is Nicholson’s show all the way. Sure Jack is going over-the-top here. But then, he’s made such an art form of doing just that, from The Shinning to The Witches of Eastwick to Batman, making it is all but impossible to take your eyes off of him doing it once more here. He’s a marvel, and while no one will confuse Dr. Buddy Rydell with any of Nicholson’s truly great cinematic turns, I seriously doubt people will be all that displeased with the comic energy and chutzpah he puts forth, either.

So, basically, all I’m saying here is the world is going the end. Despite being undermined by an incompetent director and an anemic screenplay, Sandler and Nicholson still make Anger Management click. I laughed – maybe not continually and maybe not all the time, but just enough all the same for me to admit to having liked it. God help me.

Rating: 2.5 out of 4

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