Try to imagine Homer's epic study of the destructive power of anger, 'The Iliad', transferred from the Town of Troy to the City of New York, rescripted as a film comedy, and directed by Peter Segal, the maker of 'Nutty Professor 2: the Klumps' and 'Naked Gun 33 1/3: the Final Insult', and the curious monstrosity playing in your head is probably not so very different from Segal's 'Anger Management'. This film may not be especially good or bad, but it is certainly an oddity, structuring its comedy like a double-take thriller, and taking the viewer, whether through canny design or just sheer incoherence, in directions that are wholly unexpected, and often enjoyably surreal.
When mild-mannered executive assistant Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) is found guilty of air rage after an airborne misunderstanding which spins out of control, he is assigned to Dr Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson) for a course of anger management. Soon, Buznik's life is turned upside down, as his shrinking ego falls under the unwanted, and decidedly unhinged, guidance of Rydell's rampaging id. Buznik is forced to undergo an assortment of 'therapeutic' encounters with cameo oddballs: Harry Dean Stanton as a bar-brawling blind man, Woody Harrelson as a transvestite prostitute, Heather Graham (uncredited) as a weight-obsessed bar pick-up, and the ubiquitous John C. Reilly (also uncredited) as a former bully turned peace-loving buddhist. Even the ragemeister himself John McEnroe cameos as one of Rydell's 'anger junkies'; and finally, when Buznik comes to terms with his inner rage and gets it all out of his system in the middle of a crowded Shea Stadium, none other than former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is there to preside over the mayhem.
'Anger Management' is blessed with great casting. Not only has the recent 'Punch Drunk Love' given Sandler new credibility as an actor, but it also makes it all the easier for viewers to imagine him as a quiet man primed to explode; and Nicholson has the kind of manic role here which, with the exception of the recent 'About Schmidt', he has been repeating on demand for the last two decades, but he IS very good at it.
The jokes come thick and fast, but are also very hit-and-miss, in an uneven film that seems unable to decide whether it wants to be an adult satire on America's obsession with therapy, or a juvenile gross-out comedy. Yet at the same time 'Anger Management' represents an interesting attempt to exorcise the demons of post 9/11 New York, providing a comic outlet for the quiet anger of New Yorkers, which is here reconfigured and celebrated once again as that brand of brash aggression which has always made the Big Apple taste so deliciously tart.
Will this film leave you any the wiser about the mechanics of anger? Probably not...but it might just replace the stresses, tensions and irritations of your day with a fleeting smile. And what more would you expect from anger management?
When mild-mannered executive assistant Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) is found guilty of air rage after an airborne misunderstanding which spins out of control, he is assigned to Dr Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson) for a course of anger management. Soon, Buznik's life is turned upside down, as his shrinking ego falls under the unwanted, and decidedly unhinged, guidance of Rydell's rampaging id. Buznik is forced to undergo an assortment of 'therapeutic' encounters with cameo oddballs: Harry Dean Stanton as a bar-brawling blind man, Woody Harrelson as a transvestite prostitute, Heather Graham (uncredited) as a weight-obsessed bar pick-up, and the ubiquitous John C. Reilly (also uncredited) as a former bully turned peace-loving buddhist. Even the ragemeister himself John McEnroe cameos as one of Rydell's 'anger junkies'; and finally, when Buznik comes to terms with his inner rage and gets it all out of his system in the middle of a crowded Shea Stadium, none other than former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is there to preside over the mayhem.
'Anger Management' is blessed with great casting. Not only has the recent 'Punch Drunk Love' given Sandler new credibility as an actor, but it also makes it all the easier for viewers to imagine him as a quiet man primed to explode; and Nicholson has the kind of manic role here which, with the exception of the recent 'About Schmidt', he has been repeating on demand for the last two decades, but he IS very good at it.
The jokes come thick and fast, but are also very hit-and-miss, in an uneven film that seems unable to decide whether it wants to be an adult satire on America's obsession with therapy, or a juvenile gross-out comedy. Yet at the same time 'Anger Management' represents an interesting attempt to exorcise the demons of post 9/11 New York, providing a comic outlet for the quiet anger of New Yorkers, which is here reconfigured and celebrated once again as that brand of brash aggression which has always made the Big Apple taste so deliciously tart.
Will this film leave you any the wiser about the mechanics of anger? Probably not...but it might just replace the stresses, tensions and irritations of your day with a fleeting smile. And what more would you expect from anger management?