Taglines: Let the healing begin.
After a misunderstanding aboard an airplane that escalates out of control, the mild-mannered Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) is ordered by Judge Daniels (Lynne Thigpen) to attend anger management sessions run by Doctor Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), which are filled with highly eccentric and volatile men and women. Buddy’s unorthodox approach to therapy is confrontational and abrasive and Dave is bewildered by it. Then, after yet another mishap, Judge Daniels orders Dave to step up his therapy or wind up in jail. So, Buddy moves in with Dave to help him battle his inner demons.
Buddy himself has no inner demons since he acts out at every opportunity and that includes making lewd comments about Dave’s girlfriend Linda (Marisa Tomei) and goading Dave into confronting every slight, past or present, head-on. But Buddy finally goes too far and Dave must decide whether to crawl back into his shell or stand up for himself. Could it be that Buddy’s confounding and contradictory treatment is just what the doctor ordered?
“What made the idea of Anger Management so funny to me,” says screenwriter David Dorfman, “was to start with the last guy in the world you’d ever think would need anger management and then pair him with a therapist who makes him angry.”
The true test of such a concept, he concedes, is whether the story can maintain the cleverness of its initial premise. The script for Anger Management passed that test, according to the film’s star and executive producer Adam Sandler. When Revolution Studios founder Joe Roth asked him to read the script, Sandler says he picked it up and “I immediately liked the title and knew I needed some in real life, so I figured I should at least take a look. Then I read it and I was laughing. And I just kept going and it didn’t let me down.”
The reason Dorfman’s screenplay worked so well, explains Revolution Studios partner Todd Garner, also an executive producer on the film, is that it used humor to get under the skin of a real issue and not merely for the sake of generating some good gags. “At its core, it’s about a man who’s having a tough time expressing himself and another man who comes into his life and helps him deal with that,” says Garner.
In his writing, Dorfman says he took care to make the therapy as unusual as the disease. “Doctor Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson) makes Dave (Sandler) do all the things he hates. He puts him through every possible comedic nightmare, which finally forces Dave to take action in order to survive. In the end Dave is cured, but in an unexpected way.”
Read the Full Production Notes
Directed by: Peter Segal
Starring: Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, Luis Guzman, Michelle Rodriguez, Woody Harrelson, John Turturro
Screenplay by: David Dorfman
Production Design by: Alan Au
Cinematography by: Donald McAlpine
Film Editing by: Jeff Gourson
Costume Design by: Ellen Lutter
Set Decoration by: Chris L. Spellman
Music by: Teddy Castellucci
MPAA Rating: PG-13 on appeal for crude sexual content and language.
Studio: Revolution Studios
Release Date: April 11, 2003
