"Anger Management"
Columbia Pictures
Directed by Peter Segal
Written by David Dorfman
Produced by Barry Bernardi, Derek Dauchy, Todd Garner, Jack Giarraputo, John Jacobs and Joe Roth
Starring Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, Luis Guzmán, Woody Harrelson, John Turturro and John C. Reilly
Rated PG-13
(out of four)

"Anger Management" is the logical culmination of Adam Sandler’s career. Sandler has played several characters with a high level of mental anguish/illness that haven’t been acknowledged in any of his films, save Paul Thomas Anderson’s "Punch-Drunk Love." Sandler’s picked-on hero now finds himself in anger management counseling because he never lets his anger out—a joke in itself since the sole joke of most Sandler movies is simply that he’s a violent sociopath.

Unfortunately, this film is simply an exercise in the formulaic sociopathic humor, not a comment on it. Even with Jack Nicholson as his co-star, Sandler can’t manage to redeem a movie that uses loud and angry violence to compensate for a lack of that great unobtainable goal known as humor.

Sandler again plays a soft spoken man, Dave, who acts reserved but seethes with the desire to beat people up in extended "comedic" sequences. The film follows him as he learns to do this.

In the beginning, we see that Dave was scarred when a bully picked on him as a child and "pantsed" him when he was about to kiss a girl. Now he’s such a wreck that he can’t even publicly kiss his beautiful girlfriend, who looks just like Marisa Tomei.

On the way to meet his unappreciative boss on a business trip, Dave meets Nicholson’s character, Buddy, on an airplane. Someone steals Dave’s seat and Buddy points out the free one next to him. Then Buddy starts laughing loudly at the in-flight entertainment while Dave tries to sleep, so he asks for a headset. When the flight attendant doesn’t bring him one, he asks her again. She tells him to calm down, accusing him of air rage and saying that this is a hard time for the country. He says he is calm, then an air marshal zaps him with a tazer.

This scene could have been quite funny, what with the relation of his behavior to the country and all, if some sort of logic was involved. Even nonsensical logic that Dave can’t argue with would create nice comedy, but the scene creates awkward frustration instead of being about awkward frustration.

And that’s how the whole film goes. These situations could have been funny, it seems, if only they were well-written and well executed. But maybe I’m just giving the people involved too much credit. The timing is inherently bad. Jokes go on too long without building humor and the film meanders toward such an overdone, clichéd conclusion that the characters have to mention that it’s cliché.

The airplane incident leads Dave to court, where he’s sentenced to anger counseling with none other than the man he sat next to on the plane. He asks Buddy to just sign him off since he saw what happened and knows Dave didn’t do anything wrong, but Buddy declines. Dave’s anger isn’t explosive, it’s implosive—he’s not the guy who yells at the check-out clerk about a pricing problem, he’s the check-out clerk who doesn’t say anything then gets a gun and shoots up the store one day.

As events would have it, Buddy soon moves in to put Dave on his intensive program, sleeping with him and making his life hell so that he’ll get angry. For instance, Dave says he doesn’t hold anything against the bully from his school days because the bully had to deal with his mentally ill sister. This sounds reasonable, but the film’s moral is that you should beat the shit out of everyone who crosses you.

Sandler and the great Nicholson both have their moments—and Sandler is kind enough not to act through the entire film with a voice that sounds like Cajun with a speech impediment. Other fine actors with small roles include John Tururro, Luis Guzmán, John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson. But everyone looks lost and confused, as if wondering what they’re doing in such an unfocused film. Tomei gives the impression that she really loves Dave, but sadly, it’s a mystery why.
jeremy@red-mag.com