Adam Sandler's punch-drunk dud.
Remember Punch-Drunk Love? Sure you do. That Paul Thomas Anderson film was no masterwork, but it was absolutely, positively the most interesting film ever made starring Adam Sandler-a fever dream that placed Sandler's patented Angry Weenie character in an alternate universe where his motiveless rage made storybook sense. He was grotesque and sympathetic at the same time-a combination of Jerry Lewis circa 1965 and Matthew Broderick in Election. Aside from a few lovestruck compliments doled out by dream gal Emily Watson, that picture refused to give Sandler the movie star crutches he'd leaned on in other star vehicles (overacting guest stars, pee-pee/poo-poo humor, scenes where supporting characters tell him how funny and wonderful he is). Watching Sandler squirm in the presence of his overbearing sisters, zip through endless supermarket aisles and gaze on a smashed harmonium as if it held the secrets of the universe, I uttered a sentence I'd never spoken before: "I can't wait to see what this guy does next."
As I write this, Sandler's latest star vehicle, Anger Management, pairs Sandler's violent nebbish character with an anger management therapist played by Jack Nicholson. It's the number-one motion picture in America. It's also not awful, but it's not good, either; it's agreeably mediocre in a way that only Hollywood star vehicles are allowed to be. I assume it's number one at the box office because it gives Sandler fans exactly what Sandler has conditioned them to expect. Despite the presence of legendary movie star and noted rage-oholic Nicholson, who proved his versatility yet again in the muted comedy-drama About Schmidt, the movie doesn't even take Sandler's career to a mildly different place. It's another Saturday Night Live-ish pseudo-movie-a grab bag of contrived sitcom scenes, mildly spiked with fratboy mischief, centering on a maladjusted, hot-tempered manchild who's supposed to have our sympathy because he's played by Sandler. (Like The Wedding Singer, which paired Sandler with Drew Barrymore, and Mr. Deeds, which fixed him up with Winona Ryder, Anger Management has Sandler playing opposite a leading lady, Marisa Tomei, who's way overqualified for girlfriend roles in glorified SNL movies, but who probably could not resist a Sandler-sized paycheck. Like most of Sandler's leading ladies, Tomei's job is to gaze on Sandler with radiant amazement and say things like, "You're funny!" and "You're so sweet!")
If Sandler seemed truly vulnerable in Love-as opposed to "vulnerable," a phony Hollywood scriptwriting buzzword meaning "a jerk you have to like because he's the star"-maybe it's because Sandler was vulnerable. He was pushing the limits of his talent, and by pushing, he expanded them. After Love, Sandler really only had two choices: keep pushing or fall back on formula. Naturally he chose option #2. With his $25 million paycheck and, correspondingly, a limited range of acceptable material, Sandler has become the Harrison Ford of geek comedy-a marquee name who could be more versatile than anyone realizes, but who's too chicken to risk creative failure on a grand scale.
In Anger, Sandler and his filmmaking posse-which includes five producers of The Animal-fill the screen with characters less complex, attractive and funny than Sandler's character, catalog designer Dave Buznik, and they repeatedly place Sandler in predicaments where he can erupt in volcanic rage without losing audience sympathy. He's always being unjustly accused, unjustly harassed and, following his public explosions, unjustly punished. In Anger Management, Sandler's Buznik gets into violent altercations on an airplane, in a bar, in his anger management classes, in his boss' office and at a Buddhist monastery, where he gives a monk a wedgie. (Even though the monk is a former childhood bully played by John C. Reilly, the scene still sounds funnier than it is.)
In every situation, Anger Management's script demands we acknowledge that Buznik was pushed over the edge because jerks, freaks and thugs kept ganging up on him-that he had no choice but to lash out. Buznik is forever being made to defend himself against charges of intolerance, while the script confronts him with characters that embody the very stereotypes Buznik's society keeps asking him to reject-an overmuscled, black air marshal drunk on his own authority and eager to play the race card in the film's opening air-rage scene; a couple of softcore-porn fantasy lesbians who can't stop locking lips in public; a transvestite prostitute, amusingly played in cameo by Woody Harrelson, who seems hurt when the genially homophobic Buznik rejects his advances; a smarmy coworker who has a huge cock and won't let Buznik forget it.
Like every other Sandler film, Anger is a suburban white-guy persecution fantasy that suggests its hero is doing fine, and it's the world that's up to no good. Nicholson's celebrity therapist, Buddy Rydell, who rooms with the hero as part of a crackpot intensive therapy plan, repeatedly traps Buznik into blowing his stack. Sure enough, at the end of the picture, we learn it's all for Buznik's own good-that he can only grow as a person by learning to let go and express his rage, or something. (Anger Management seems a harmless time-waster until you consider how many batterers will feel vindicated by it.)
Throughout, Sandler is his usual simmering, constipated self, doing nothing he hasn't done a million times before. Nicholson's role is truncated and makes zero sense-he's an anger management guru who likes to scream at people and play pranks on them-but he still acts Sandler right off the screen. All in all, it's a major disappointment, especially when you consider that six months ago, Sandler was starting to look like bona fide comic movie star who wasn't above taking a risk or two, rather than a tv clown who got lucky. What a shame: With his nonsense songs, yearning eyes and percolating suburban fury, Sandler is an original. He has a shot at becoming a timelessly goony American icon-a Gen-X Jerry Lewis, or Harold Lloyd with a temper. I guess he'd rather be Chevy Chase.