Since seeing the movie, the thing I'm trying most to manage is my anger at not leaving the theater after 20 minutes of this inane drivel. Now, if you want to know what I really think of it, read on.

For this big-time cast, it's the usual for Adam Sandler and the worst I've seen for Jack Nicholson. But what really puts it in the cellar are writer David Dorfman and director Peter Segal's lame concoction. I mention their names to put the blame where it belongs. I'm also venting a little, here.

This is a comedy based on two guys meeting up and producing a situation full of laughs. But, the formula goes sour from the git go. Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) is a shy, repressed guy who speaks softly and is accused by a dominatrix stewardess of harrassment. When she brings out a guy who might be an air marshall or just a beefy steward, he gets even more gross intimidation and unsupported accusations. Our gutless hero takes the verbal beating with innefectual denials and stuttering gutteral noises, making him prime meat for Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), a therapist in anger management who is in the seat next to him. Imagine.

It turns out that the anger manager uses his position as a therapist to wreak the havoc of domination over his vulnerable patients and, to do reality another bad turn, has influence with the court, which sees to it that innocent, unjustly maligned people are brought under his control for further life wreckage.

This is so implausible and unpalatable, it's not funny.

The only thing that managed to keep me in my seat is Marisa Tomei who, as Linda, Buddy's girlfriend, is farther out of the wind of comedic disaster that blows through this script than most of the others. But, my whispers to her to get the mess more on track went unnoticed. I had to settle just for her tempered loveliness as her beau struggles against a tide of emotional dizziness to arrive at a commitment.

Cast talents such as John Tuturro, Luis Guzman and John C. Reilly go along with the misconception as well, and can't rise to a rescue of the prolongued feebleness.

I get the Sandler schtick. His success and popularity is based on the introverted hero who finds a way to come out of his shell and triumph over adversity. Keaton and Chaplin created their classics out of this gist, and Sandler has found how to make the formula work for him. Even in so terrible an adaptation of it as this excuse for a comedy, it still works magic at the boxoffice. This movie is a financial success. Who'da thunk it? That great big audience out there who could care less about taste and classic cleverness, that's who.

After this film, we tend to share Dave's feelings of inadequacy. But we didn't need a movie to cause them.

                                      ~~  Jules Brenner