Home >  A & E >  Movies/Videos

Friday, April 11, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor

I went to an Adam Sandler movie and it was smart. Then I went to a Jack Nicholson movie and Jack wasn't. I knew something was up.

	Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler have fun with a little role reversal in "Anger Management." (Phillip Caruso, SMPSP/Revolution Studios/Columbia Pictures)

Two of cinema's biggest stars, they inhabit opposite ends of the Hollywood firmament. Sandler plays characters with room-temperature IQs who, at least, are not bothered by delusions of adequacy. Nicholson, who started out playing wackos in Roger Corman exploitation flicks, graduated to respectability and beyond -- he owns three Academy Awards, and only Meryl Streep has more than his 12 Oscar nominations. His characters are often unhinged but they are seldom stupid.

Now the two men are co-stars in "Anger Management," a comedy about a schlemiel (Sandler) under the care of a psychiatrist (Nicholson) who is so unorthodox that he's scary. At first glance, everything seems to fit.

But soon you realize Sandler is the straight man. Nicholson is the clown. Huh?

"Anger Management" represents the next step for two actors whose careers are changing course. Sandler, now age 36, can't play childish characters forever. Nicholson, who turns 66 this month, is getting old for a leading man even by Hollywood standards.

Accordingly, Sandler's characters are starting to grow up while retaining core elements of the persona that made him popular -- his sweet cluelessness and his brief and sudden outbursts of violent behavior.

Nicholson, for his part, seems to be opting for more interior, less flashy roles in his dramas, even as he seems more willing to exploit himself for laughs in "Anger Management," in which he shares top billing with Sandler and, for once, lets the other guy play the malcontent.

The most startling stage in Nicholson's metamorphosis earned him that 12th Oscar nomination. In last year's movie "About Schmidt," he finally acted his age -- playing an Omaha insurance man facing retirement.

He buries all the famous Jack mannerisms underneath the facade of this aging dullard, who seems as mystified by life as one of Sandler's man-child characters. It is just as shocking to see the woman who plays his wife -- a plump, white-haired matron. We're used to seeing Nicholson with women like Lara Flynn Boyle, a recent squeeze who's half his age.

But Nicholson was already heading in this direction before "About Schmidt." In the 2001 film "The Pledge," he was a retiring cop who becomes obsessed with the murder of a little girl, possibly by a serial killer. He pledges his soul to the girl's mother that he will catch the murderer, and then becomes involved with a waitress and her daughter. He reads bedtime stories to the girl and again stows his roguish charm behind a mustache, jowls and a brush cut.

"The Pledge" was the second movie he made for director Sean Penn. The first was 1995's "The Crossing Guard," in which he was the father of a girl killed by a drunk driver. There is enough of a traditional Nicholson character in him, however, to be plotting revenge on the driver.

In contrast, "Anger Management" lets him play the comic instigator as Dr. Buddy Rydell, a counselor assigned to help Sandler's character, Dave Buznik, cope with his fury. Never mind that milquetoast Dave doesn't seem to have done anything more than ask a dismissive flight attendant a second time for a headset.

Next thing poor Dave knows, Buddy is moving in with him and taking over his life. The part is tailor-made for the pointed Nicholson eyebrows and his patented maniacal grin. But part of the joke is that Buddy doesn't always seem to know what he's doing, either -- and Jack always seems to know what he's doing, even when he's playing nutcases.

Sandler started out playing guys who never seem to know what they're doing -- in "Billy Madison" his character displays both the brainpower and social skills of a toddler. But he is often blessed with a special physical skill that lets him prevail -- the slap-shot golf swing in "Happy Gilmore," the tackling ability in "The Waterboy."

But the man-child has been growing up ever since "The Wedding Singer," in which for the first time he plays a mensch. His character is a likable young man who sings at weddings because he's a romantic at heart. The movie may be sappy but it is sweet rather than stupid.

Sandler tried to mix the two personas in "Big Daddy," where he adopts a child basically to impress a woman. On the one hand, he acts too much like a kid himself to be much of a father. On the other hand, he becomes earnest enough about the task for its own sake that we're rooting for him by film's end.

Still, it came as a shock when hip young director Paul Thomas Anderson, the virtuoso behind the multilayered dramas "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," announced he was writing a film for Sandler.

The result, "Punch-Drunk Love," took advantage of Sandler's trademark combination of naivete and hostility but turned him into a functional adult, albeit one whose life was micromanaged by his seven overbearing sisters. Looking for love in all the wrong places, he found the right woman almost by accident. Only Anderson could have dreamed of teaming him with Emily Watson, then known primarily for madwoman roles in European films.

In "Anger Management" he designs sales catalogs and has a smart, pretty girlfriend played by Marisa Tomei. But he is so nonconfrontational that people take advantage of him. Dr. Buddy pushes his buttons until he has no choice but to stand up for himself.

Once again, it represents a natural progression in Sandler's comic persona. Half the fun of "Anger Management" lies in watching him and Nicholson circle each other as the winds of their careers change.