Method to the madness

Anger Management's set-up involves a shaky premise that severely tests one's ability to suspend disbelief if one is to stay put in one's seat and continue watching, and what happens from that point is so completely outrageous, ridiculous and insane that it boggles the mind. But this is a good thing, in this movie, see, because it's hilarious.

Jack Nicholson (in full freakazoid mode, complete with his deranged twitching eyebrows and his beyond-perverse I-am-still-the-devil leering grin) and Adam Sandler (massively controlled, making the scenes where he actually explodes even funnier) are perfect together, and there is even a pay-off of sorts by the end, but by that time - although I still of course appreciated it - I didn't even really care; I was having much too much fun roaring in laughter throughout this shameless foray into demented chicanery.

There's a scene, for instance, with the great Harry Dean Stanton as a blind man in a bar, that had me nearly falling off my seat. And by the time Sandler's childhood nemesis (a maniacal John C. Reilly) shows up as a monk in a monastery (for the Adam Sandler movie requisite senseless-over-the-top-violence scene), fuggedaboudit.

Towards the beginning, I found myself wondering why Jack Nicholson decided to do this movie, in light of all the brilliantly serious performances he's been gracing us with recently, and I finally figured it out - this was his final and ultimate revenge for having to put up with the hideous Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.