April 11, 2003 | The mere sight of Adam
Sandler and Jack Nicholson on the same movie poster is enough to make
most people
smile. So a full-length feature pairing these
wild and crazy guys should be a bona fide laugh riot, right?
Not
quite.
Anger
Management rarely manages to make the most of the dynamic duo at
its disposal. Indeed, this slapdash and surprisingly tepid comedy often
plays like one of those ramshackle trifles that kept David Spade and
the late Chris Farley gainfully employed in the mid-1990s. Directed
by Peter Segal and written by David Dorfman, hired hands who demand
little from their lead players, it is the kind of lazily constructed
star-powered project that brings out the best in deal-brokers, not filmmakers.
Sandler
plays David Buznik, a mild-mannered fellow who compulsively avoids confrontations,
stressful situations - and, much to the dismay of his long-time girlfriend
(Marisa Tomei), public displays of affection. Through a series of highly
improbable but modestly amusing circumstances, David is labeled
a dangerous rageaholic after an unfortunate incident aboard an airliner.
So he's remanded to the care of Dr. Buddy Rydell (Nicholson), a renowned
anger management therapist. Trouble is, Dr. Rydell's intensive therapy
consists mainly of berating, humiliating and just plain aggravating
his hapless patient. There is a method to the doctor's seeming madness,
of course. But the audience sees through the trickery long, long before
David does.
Sandler
and Nicholson are perfectly cast - maybe too perfectly - in roles that
allow them to rely on familiar shtick. As Dr. Rydell, Nicholson gets
to arch his eyebrows into artful curlicues while suggesting - even as
he attempts to sound most solicitous - an endless capacity for demonic
mischief. As David, Sandler offers a broadly comical variation of his
much subtler (and scarier) performance in Punch-Drunk Love. In
the latter film, which cast him as a man choking to death on his pent-up
rage, he played for keeps. Here, he plays for laughs, with only sporadic
success. Heather Graham, John Turturro, Luis Guzman and Harry Dean Stanton
are among the supporting players who periodically drop by for a few
good laughs. Too few, however.