I think Jack Nicholson is probably the greatest movie star ever. Look at his resume and you will see the versatility this man is capable of. He is excellent at drama and comedy. His sheer charisma precedes everything he touches. Even his bad movies are still pretty good. Who among us would not want to be in Jack’s shoes for even an hour?
However, knowing what Nicholson is capable of, watching “Anger Management” becomes frustrating. Here he plays a great character with seemingly sinister motives (at least during most of the movie) and the filmmakers fail to recognize the potential they are throwing into the garbage. After starting off well, the film limps to an unsatisfactory conclusion thanks to the timidity of the script.
In the film, Adam Sandler is a passive character who is inexplicably charged with assaulting a stewardess on a flight and is sentenced to attend intense anger management therapy by the highly unorthodox psychiatrist played by Nicholson. In order to give Sandler his utmost attention, Nicholson moves into his apartment and begins to follow his every move, which turns this otherwise submissive guy into a furious ball of rage.
Sandler plays his typical nice guy with a violent streak, and he’s good at it, which may be the reason he seems to play this same character in every film. It is no wonder why he remade Frank Capra’s “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” last year. He is constantly emulating those feel good films, but through the prism of “Animal House.” Many of his films utilize the conclusion formula where everything clears up nicely. It doesn’t work with this film because it is necessary to tame two characters.
Mainly, Nicholson has the better character and when he dwindles from a dominant role to only a plot device pushing Sandler to a happy ending, the movie just stops. The moviegoer hopes for Nicholson to continue being the jerk, rather than turning into the genius conjurer of an elaborate transformation of a meek office worker. It defeats the fun of the entire film when the Rube Goldberg plot is revealed.
“Anger Management” is two-thirds of a really good comedy, and one should hope that the film breaks before he or she has to suffer through the fake ending.