Director - Peter Segal
Writer -
David Dorfman
Director of
photography - Donald M. McAlpine
Editor -
Jeff Gourson
Music -
Teddy Castellucci
Production designer
- Alan Au
Producer -
Jack Giarraputo
and Barry Bernardi
Revolution Studios and Columbia Pictures.
101 minutes.
Rated PG-13
for alcohol consumption, foul language, and sexual situations and
references.
STARRING:
Adam Sandler (Dave Buznik), Jack Nicholson (Dr. Buddy Rydell), Marisa
Tomei (Linda), Luis Guzmán (Lou), Allen Covert (Andrew), Lynne Thigpen
(Judge Daniels), Woody Harrelson (Galaxia/Security Guard), John Turturro
(Chuck), Heather Graham (Kendra) and Robert Merrill (himself).
I was interested to see what Adam Sandler did to follow-up
one of my favorite films of last year —
Punch-drunk Love. Director
Paul Thomas Anderson perceived a real actor behind Sandler’s usual
lowbrow-comedy shenanigans. With Sandler and a great
supporting cast, Anderson delivered the most original and exciting
romantic comedy since When Harry Met Sally, one that went beyond
the bounds of formula and became a profound
modern parable about romance, grace, rage,
and self-control.
That was an impressive step
forward for Sandler..
This year, we take several steps
backward.
While Sandler’s new movie
Anger Management will definitely take
him to the next level of fame, it finds him stumbling back into crass
jokes and preposterous storytelling. I should have looked beyond the
impressive cast list and been worried by the
names of the producers —
these are the folks responsible for the
forgettable Master of Disguise and The Animal. This
crew of filmmakers, including director Peter Segal, isn't even playing the same game as P.T. Anderson… they’re playing a whole different sport.
Watching Anger Management is like going to the NBA All-Star Game
and
seeing a fantastic team take the floor, but when the game begins you
realize that they left their brains in the locker room.
Segal must have been proud to
score such a great cast. And the premise had promise. But that’s
about all he can be proud of. The movie tries to mix
the buddy-movie feel of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the
raunch-fest of a Farrelly Brothers movie, and the psychological twists of thrillers like The Game. These things don't mix.
Here’s the promising premise: Sandler stars as Dave
Buznik, the usual shy, insecure, occasionally wrathful Sandler character
who this time stumbles into a giant misunderstanding and ends up in
court. No, this isn’t The Peter Buck
Story. You see, Buznik didn’t really lose his
temper. He was a victim of post-9/11 hypersensitivity on the part of
passenger airline staff. Thus, he is swiftly appointed to attend anger
management courses, and there he provokes the other
offenders to rage
by demonstrating just how self-controlled he actually is. Soon, his
anger management instructor,
Buddy Rydell (Nicholson), is moving into his apartment to
tyrannize and terrorize his life until his well-repressed anger either
goes away entirely or explodes and sends him into solitary confinement.
There's more. Too much more. The
movie piles on characters and tangents that
exist only to allow for as many dirty jokes as possible. It’s like they took a bunch of
lousy Saturday Night Live skits and constructed a flimsy story that
would connect the dots.
Of course, there's a love story. And there’s a plot about whether Sandler will
get the big promotion at the office. Plus, there is a whole lot of time and energy spent
discussing the importance of a man’s “size” in his relationship with his
girlfriend. To cap things off, it
stoops to play on our emotions about the terrorist-damaged New York,
giving Mayor Giuliani a most insultingly inappropriate last-act
appearance.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Anger
Management is this: the actors seem to have no idea how bad the
movie is. They revel in its badness. Nicholson’s wicked grin still seems
to delight many critics, but I got sick of it long before
this same old shtick won him another Oscar
in As Good As It Gets. In fact,
Nicholson has become such a predictable performer that he
earned himself an Oscar nomination again this
year merely by holding back from his signature eye-flashing and
teeth-baring. Here, he basically hams it up,
showing he has as much sense of good comedy as Robert DeNiro has shown
in recent years.
Folks don’t expect much of Sandler, and, well,
this time he meets their low expectations with
the same menu of stammering, blinking, and explosive rage that he did in
The Waterboy. The
two have a couple of good scenes, like
the one in which Nicholson forces Sandler to
stop in rush hour traffic and sing “I Feel Pretty."
But then they bring the joke back over and over, until we’re sick
of it.
The wonderful Marisa Tomei continues to confound
the expectations of those who know she’s a great actress, wasting
another of her rare big screen appearances on this gooey-eyed and ludicrous
character.
In fact, the only pleasure I had watching Anger
Management was being constantly surprised by the likeable actors who
lined up to embarrass themselves. John C. Reilly, Harry Dean Stanton,
Luis Guzman, John Turturro… the list goes on. This cast deserves the
Coen Brothers, not this stuff.
Thanks to the cast's enthusiasm,
the comedy engine turns over a few times,
splutters, sounds like it’s coming to life with something truly
inspired… but then it stalls, choking on the fumes of mean-spirited punchlines. We are forced into the unpleasant company of sex-obsessed
lesbian porn actresses who exist in this movie only so the frat boys in
the audience can hoot in Neanderthal enthusiasm. We are even subjected
to a scene in which a Buddhist monk is baited into violence and
adolescent insult-hurling. Kevin Nealon plays an attorney who is gay,
and any reference to his homosexuality is used to make us laugh at him.
Why isn’t somebody blowing the whistle on the movie as throwing fuel on
the fire of prejudice?
It says a lot that Heather Graham, once again
onscreen only to flaunt her pin-up physique, is one of the highlights of
the movie. At least she has the guts to over-play her big scene and
achieve some level of outrageous surrealism. (I won’t ever see a plate
of brownies without thinking of her face-stuffing temper tantrum.)
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
had the appeal of a good story about
being trapped in bad circumstances with unpleasant company.
We could relate to it. It struck a balance between engaging
comedy and a simple heartwarming story of an
odd couple trying to learn to live with each other. It left us with a
simple moral: open yourself to the outcast and the unappealing… learn
the joys of showing grace and love.
Anger Management has no
such virtues. It careens between raunchy humor and a story of
“true love” in which characters make alarmingly immature and foolish
decisions with frightening frequency. The moral seems to be: Learn to
French Kiss in public.
And the movie spends so much time worrying about
whether “size makes a difference”, you have to wonder if the
screenwriters have some kind of insecurity complex. The
film makes a pretty clear argument that relationships are really all
about sexual satisfaction. It's all the lovers talk
about.
To
make a bad movie dull, the whole thing is filmed without a fragment of creativity.
I like what the New York Times critic said: “In the list
of adjectives that one could append to Mr. Segal, the word slick is not
one of them — that capacity seems beyond his means. Some of the movie is
so primitively staged that you can almost hear someone leafing through
the book of instructions that came with the camera.”
How does such a comedy get made?
I blame There’s Something About Mary.
When that film became a smash hit, studio
execs everywhere realized that they didn’t need to pay
screenwriters for good comedy… they just needed to find
someone who learned how to talk from hanging
around frat houses, bars, and locker rooms. For some reason, large
numbers of people will pay good money to hear the same sort of fart and
dick jokes they heard in junior high. There's nothing
wrong with a good bawdy joke... but it has to be a good bawdy
joke, and no one seems to remember how to tell those. Thus, generations are growing up
believing that this is good comedy, while good comedies are hardly
promoted at all, shoved aside into the “art house theaters” where only
those who listen to movie critics will find them.
If you’re still reading, I assume you’re already
one of those people who listens and who cares about decent moviemaking,
and you probably know those arthouse theatres pretty well... so what
good is this article going to do to stop the
masses who don't listen, don't care, and have already lined up for
opening night, making Anger Management the box office hit of the
week?
Jeffrey's Rating:
D
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explanation of ratings. |
