Forget about Anger Management, Adam Sandler needs some serious career management.
Sandler did not become a $20-million US man by pleasing critics.
He defied them, turning out comedies they summarily panned but which delighted his fans.
Movies like Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy and Big Daddy were collaborations with Sandler's longtime friends, including his writing partner Tim Herlihy.
These movies played into Sandler's ability to play the downtrodden lovable loser who eventually triumphs, riding off into the sunset with the beautiful girl.
Last year, Sandler got the best reviews of his career for playing a version of his famous screen persona in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love.
The romantic comedy brought Sandler to Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival, but it barely made $20 million.
Now comes Anger Management, which pairs Sandler with Jack Nicholson in what is a great comic premise.
Sandler is Dave Buznik, a sexually and socially repressed advertising executive.
Dave has never been able to show any public displays of affection, disappointment, frustration or anger.
One day on a flight, he asserts himself by asking a flight attendant for headphones.
The simple request escalates into an incident that gets Dave sentenced to anger-management sessions.
His therapist is Buddy Rydell (Nicholson), whose unorthodox methods have either worked miracles or driven people insane, depending on whose opinion matters.
Nicholson is in his element, playing bits and pieces of his psychotic characters from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining to Witches of Eastwick and Mars Attacks!
There's no question it works, earning Nicholson the lion's share of the film's belly laughs.
For most of the film Sandler graciously plays Nicholson's straight man, allowing the nonsense to bounce off him.
Nicholson gets the big slapstick moments.
Sandler gets to layer on the sarcasm.
This combination works best in the beginning, but wears thin as the absurdity of Buznik's situation escalates.
Sandler is hilarious when Dave has to deal with the other patients in his anger-management classes because John Turturro, Luis Guzman, Krista Allen and January Jones create such great caricatures.
For poor Dave, it's flashes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Nicholson playing the controlling, manipulative Nurse Ratched.
But director Peter Segal and writer David Dorfman can't sustain the manic pace needed to make Anger Management a laugh riot.
They definitely create moments of hilarity but they are surrounded by dead spots.
Woody Harrelson has a cameo as a transvestite prostitute.
The scene is funny not because of Dave's reactions but because it is so obviously Harrelson in bad drag doing a bad German accent.
Sandler literally takes a back seat to Harrelson and Nicholson.
Heather Graham is more successful with her cameo as the woman who allows Dave to pick her up in a bar and who then tries to seduce him against his will.
Anger Management succeeds as inspired casting and flamboyant fun for Nicholson and most of the supporting cast.
For Sandler, it's an exercise in restraint and a further attempt to distance himself from the unapologetic juvenile nonsense that made him a star.
(This film is rated PG)
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