Anger Management Buy Anger Management from my web shop

(- 2003 -)

Original Title Anger Management Director Peter Segal Genre Comedy Released 2003-03-5 MPAA Rating Rated PG-13 on appeal for crude sexual content and language. Rated 6.1

Plot Summary

After a misunderstanding aboard an airplane that escalates out of control, the mild-mannered Dave Buznik is ordered by Judge Daniels to attend anger management sessions run by Doctor Buddy Rydell, which are filled with highly eccentric and volatile men and women. Buddy's unorthodox approach to therapy is confrontational and abrasive and Dave is bewildered by it. Then, after yet another mishap, Judge Daniels orders Dave to step up his therapy or wind up in jail. So, Buddy moves in with Dave to help him battle his inner demons. Buddy himself has no inner demons since he acts out at every opportunity and that includes making lewd comments about Dave's girlfriend Linda and goading Dave into confronting every slight, past or present, head-on. But Buddy finally goes too far and Dave must decide whether to crawl back into his shell or stand up for himself. Could it be that Buddy's confounding and contradictory treatment is just what the doctor ordered?

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Actors / Character

Adam Sandler as Dave Buznik , Jack Nicholson as Dr. Buddy Rydell , Marisa Tomei as Linda , Luis Guzmán as Lou , Jonathan Loughran as Nate , Kurt Fuller as Frank Head , Krista Allen as Stacy , January Jones as Gina , John Turturro as Chuck , Lynne Thigpen as Judge Brenda Daniels , Nancy Walls as Flight Attendant , Woody Harrelson as Galaxia/Garry the Guard , Kevin Nealon as Sam , Allen Covert as Andrew , Adrian Ricard as Rose Rydell

IMDB User Comments

I wasn't sure to expect a great comedy because Jack Nicholson was in it or a ridiculous comedy because Adam Sandler was in it, but I should have known. Jack Nicholson has an endless ability to entertain, he's one of the VERY few men in Hollywood that are just fun to watch almost regardless of what movie they're in, but unfortunately he is not able to overcome Sandler's equal skills in goofy childish humor, which generally serve to dumb his movies down and challenge the audience to pretend they're not watching a kid's movie packed with bad taste. Anger Management definitely had its share of good moments, but as a whole it's one of those movies that is going to a very specific destination, and had better do something interesting along the way. The problem is that the only interesting thing it does along the way is give Adam Sandler one excuse after another to get angry, combining the hilarity of his desperate attempts to control his anger in Happy Gilmore with his sudden outbursts of gratuitous (and strangely satisfying) violence from The Waterboy. Jack Nicholson is great as the questionable anger management therapist, although I'm still not 100% sure why he signed on with what was sure to have been from the beginning just another goofy Sandler comedy, although I'm sure he had a good time making the film. Just before I saw the movie, I was getting ready to tape the MTV Icon show about Metallica, and I caught the last half or so of a show called Punk'd, that featured Brittany Spears and that guy from that one TV show, the 70's Show I think, and basically they played a lot of pranks on different people and each other in a thinly disguised Tom Green style. I normally don't watch much TV, so I was surprised to watch a few minutes of that show and then see almost exactly the same thing in Anger Management. Jack Nicholson's character in the movie was the type of anger management therapist whose therapy consists of similar tactics, playing pranks on people in order to get them to recover from their anger without even really realizing that their therapist is doing anything other than screwing with them to piss them off even more. There are plenty of tricks which would not get very far in the real world without resulting in a pile of serious lawsuits, regardless of how many judges you know. We never find out, for example, who the owner of the ill-fated Lexus was, and I'd like to hear what kind of insurance company would buy a brand new Lexus that fell off a building just because it had a business card on it. Maybe he knows some people down there, too. The therapy sessions are some of the best scenes in the movie (besides the singing parts, which were so funny that I might try them out myself the next time I get mad), but there are only two or three of them, and even those are a little contrived. John Turturro has a great role as one of the other people in the therapy group, a man who has an intense anger problem and is in constant need of help with it, and of course Sandler fans will have a blast pointing out all of the actors that turn up in all of his movies. Sadly, however, they may have more fun doing this than watching the movie. (spoilers) The end of the movie contains a brief scene that goes back and explains what was happening in key scenes, which is a universal sign of weak script-writing. Unless this is a Scooby Doo cartoon, there had better be a better way to explain to the audience what happened. In this case, the movie allows us to believe something that is obviously untrue just so the rest of the movie makes sense. For example, we are initially led to believe that the entire reason for the assignation of anger management therapy in the first place, which leads to the premise for the rest of the movie, was because of a scene on an airplane where Sandler was badly mistreated by the attendants and then assaulted by a man pretending to be a security guard, even though he was just a disgruntled passenger. If you look at the movie overall, the only message it delivers is about staying in your assigned seat on the airplane. Everything always works out a little too conveniently and according to Nicholson's dubious plan, which is occasionally accounted for only by suggesting that he knows certain people that helped his plan along, such as the judge and the radio newscasters at the baseball game. It's like The Cable Guy with anger management therapy instead of cable. I was just waiting for Sandler to try to call the police on Nicholson, only to have Nicholson grin and say to the officer, `How's that therapy working out for you?' Of course the movie ends with Sandler getting the girl in front of a whole baseball stadium full of people, as Nicholson smiles at the top of the stairway and walks off into the stadium like a guardian angel. Very cute, but hopefully no one ever took the movie as something that was meant to be taken serious at all. The way the movie eventually works out is not entirely unsatisfying in any way, despite how obviously contrived it all is, but it is just packaged a little too neatly. Most movies are packaged pretty neatly these days, but the reason this causes a problem for Anger Management is because it is a movie with such a huge amount of variables. There are so many risky stunts pulled and so many different explosive characters that it is just too much to ask us to believe that it could end not only as happily as it did, but with a whole stadium full of people cheering for our hero and his girlfriend at the end of the movie. Anger Management is not a bad date movie, but it even presses the boundaries of this genre pretty hard at some points. I am a little confused as to who exactly the target audience is for a movie like this, besides the obvious Sandler fans who will watch any movie that he comes out with (I happen to be among this group, just not the group that will love any movie that he comes out with just because he's in it), but it's unfortunate that there are so many Jack Nicholson fans (more than likely a group of people who have slightly more mature taste in movies) that are going to hate it because Nicholson's skill was not able to pull the movie away from Sandler's childishness. Sadly, the movie is something of a kid's movie that contains one too many lesbian adult film stars to be any good for the kids to watch. Evidently Sandler and his producers are operating under the firm belief that their audience has increased in age but not maturity. Anger Management is made for the kids who have grown up and now want to see what they weren't allowed to before. But hey, at least they tagged on a cute ending.

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