Sandler plays David Buznik, a man who lets his inner anger bubble but it never really bursts, much to the chagrin of his beautiful girlfriend, Linda (Marisa Tomei). Through situations that are seemingly no fault of his own, David ends up in an anger management group, led by the irascible Dr. Buddy Rydell. As played by Jack Nicholson, Dr. Buddy can best be described as "Jack-like." So there's not a whole lot of inventiveness here. I imagine that this is indeed what it's like to interact with Jack on a one on one basis.

Really, David doesn't seem like that bad of a guy, so we don't know what the big deal is. Instead of bothering to explain the characters, the movie uses the whole anger management ploy as simply a setup for humor with Sandler and Nicholson. It's the cool guy and the nerd, the wild man and the reserved.

Jack is a fine enough comedic actor, but this isn't exactly the kind of script that follows in the tradition of the far better About Schmidt. It's par for the course, and same with Sandler's performance, which certainly doesn't build on what he may have learned from Punchdrunk Love. It's all the same crap and there's no surprises, but at least I can say that this movie has some very cool cameos, including turns by three Boogie Nights vets, Luis Guzman, Heather Graham and John C. Reilly. Not only that, John Tuturro, Krista Allen, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Nealon and Clint Black all have very funny turns in an otherwise crappy movie.

Anger Management made me angry. It blows a fairly interesting concept with two interesting actors in a wash of mediocrity. Not only that, I really hated the reveal of the "The Game" like ending. After all, it's completely expected and you don't care about anyone in the film any way. At the most, it's worth a couple of chuckles.

Movie Grade: C+

Video: 4 out of 5
It's beautiful and brand spanking new. Whoopee.
Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1