Jack Nicholson has had a long, strange trip from his early days playing bit parts in Roger Corman's schlocky epics to today, when he has established himself as one of America's premier actors. At the beginning of his trip, during one haze-filled and drug-fueled weekend, he helped write the script for the Monkees' first and only motion picture, "Head." While deeply meaningful and full of important symbolism to ardent Davy Jones' fans, "Head" was mostly a confused and plotless jumble of half-finished sketches and psychedelic imagery that left most people either deeply perplexed or insanely bored.
The screenwriter of "Anger Management," Nicholson's latest film, has followed "Head's" example of confused and half-finished screenwriting and forged an unholy alliance between that and the Adam Sandler formula.
Sandler also has had a long, strange trip from his early days playing Smitty on "The Cosby Show" to becoming one of Hollywood's premier profit machines, and he can attribute his success to his discovery of the Formula, his very own elixir for transforming lead into gold.
The Formula should be instantly recognizable to anyone who has sat through any of Sandler's comedies. First, Sandler plays a goofy, yet ultimately sweet jerk with emotional issues who gets caught in an unusual situation, has bouts of uncontrolled rage, and gets the girl in the end.
"Anger Management" does not deviate from this element of the Formula in the least. Sandler plays Dave Buznik, a timid employee at a pet clothes catalogue who has repressed his emotions ever since an embarrassing incident in his childhood. After he is wrongly accused of assaulting a flight attendant, the court sentences him to anger management classes that are led by Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson).
Rydell's techniques are rather unorthodox, since he soon moves in with Buznik and begins to make Buznik's life a living hell. The formerly meek Buznik soon becomes increasingly agitated and infuriated as he suffers from Rydell's unusual techniques.
Buznik thus differs from Sandler's other protagonists, such as Bobby Boucher from "The Waterboy" or Happy Gilmore from the film of the same name, but only in the matter of details. He might not share Boucher's southern accent or Gilmore's penchant for golf, but his emotional baggage and propensity for violence are all too similar. Just as Boucher has issues with his mother, Buznik is incapable of letting go of his childhood trauma. And just as Gilmore inappropriately releases his rage by assaulting Bob Barker on the golf course, Buznik eventually attacks his childhood nemesis, who has become a Buddhist monk.
Marisa Tomei has the dubious honor of playing Sandler's love interest in "Anger Management." She joins the long line of women from Julie Bowen, Drew Barrymore and Winona Ryder to play characters who leave moviegoers scratching their heads in dumbfounded incredulity at why they fall for Sandler's cavalcade of idiots. Tomei only appears sporadically throughout most of the film, usually only to move forward the plot and provide romantic angst for Buznik, until her character becomes central during the big romantic scene at the climax.
The other component of the formula is, of course, the juvenile scatological humor that now pervades American comedies. This type of humor can be funny, but only when it's coupled with subtlety or social commentary, and Sandler never provides either. Instead he relies on cheap gags relying on either bodily functions or inane behavior. Only the Fox network seems willing to go lower than Sandler to entertain.
"Anger Management" even forgoes the logic that at least made Sandler's other films somewhat plausible. "Waterboy" and "The Wedding Singer" at least had the structure of a sports movie and romantic comedy to hold them together, respectively. "Anger Management" instead feels like a hastily assembled conglomeration of half-finished sketch ideas strung together on an absolutely nonsensical plot. "Head" at least had a mellow sinsemilla cloud to blame for its disconnectedness, but "Anger Management" does not share the same excuse for being deeply perplexing and insanely boring.
This film feels more like a practical joke on the audience, but, unlike fellow practical joker Ashton Kutcher, Adam Sandler doesn't have the decency to own up to his joke and return everyone's money at the movie's end.
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