A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Anger Management

Date Viewed: 4/13/03

Details:

Jack Nicholson

Adam Sandler

Marisa Tomei

Heather Graham

Woody Harrelson

John Turturro

Director: Peter Segal

Score: -1/2

The Review: Note to scriptwriters: the (biblical) Book of Job does not make good source material. Please stop strip mining it.

I do not like the Book of Job. (I do not like green eggs and ham.) Movies patterned on the Book of Job have a lot in common: the endless and often imaginative heaping of trials and tribulations on an undeserving but plucky schmuck, inevitably a radical mismatch between cause and effect, gross violations of logic and reason. I cannot find them at all entertaining -- they are usually pointless exercises in the enjoyment of someone else's pain and embarrassment, no matter how much of a laugh track we are led to believe should be present. I've complained about this tendency, peripherally, in the most recent Harry Potter movie, where there happens to be some redeeming aspect of character to relieve the boredom of tribulation. Here, there is no such reprieve: the characters are neither interesting nor compelling.

Although, in the final analysis, Anger Management is not really a re-scripting of Job, it sure looks like it for the first hour or so, and I almost walked out. I will offer no justification for my observation that it's not quite a Job job, except that I did not rank it as absolutely totally negative, and I did stay until the end. But it is marginally watchable, boringly frustrating, essentially unredeeming, and ultimately uninteresting. It's a con job, of sorts, and I do not appreciate being conned out of my time or my money.

The doleful tale is of a New York executive wannabe (Sandler), tripped up and accused of misdeeds in the heat of anger -- but we the audience are not quite sure why he's being targeted by the fickle finger of fate. It's almost as if we and he are occupying some alternate universe in which the descriptions of our actions appear insanely mismatched to our perceptions of our actions; as a rationalist and reductionist, this is as close to anathema as I get. He is assigned to anger management therapy under the tutelage of Dr. Rydell (Nicholson). Jack plays Jack, and the plot goes downhill from there, as did my attention span. Nicholson is good, mind you, but Sandler is totally unappealing. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to watch this, unless to get to the root of the puzzle. Consider the fact that the phrase "anger management" might have multiple meanings.

Harrelson has a bizarre and quite amusing cameo.

(17-Apr-03)

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