April 11, 2003 | The mere sight of Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson on the same movie poster is enough to make most people smile. So a full-length feature pairing these wild and crazy guys should be a bona fide laugh riot, right? Not quite.
Management rarely manages to make the most of the dynamic duo at its disposal. Indeed, this slapdash and surprisingly tepid comedy often plays like one of those ramshackle trifles that kept David Spade and the late Chris Farley gainfully employed in the mid-1990s. Directed by Peter Segal and written by David Dorfman, hired hands who demand little from their lead players, it is the kind of lazily constructed star-powered project that brings out the best in deal-brokers, not filmmakers.
Sandler plays David Buznik, a mild-mannered fellow who compulsively avoids confrontations, stressful situations – and, much to the dismay of his long-time girlfriend (Marisa Tomei), public displays of affection. Through a series of highly improbable but modestly amusing circumstances, David is labeled a dangerous rageaholic after an unfortunate incident aboard an airliner. So he’s remanded to the care of Dr. Buddy Rydell (Nicholson), a renowned anger management therapist. Trouble is, Dr. Rydell’s intensive therapy consists mainly of berating, humiliating and just plain aggravating his hapless patient. There is a method to the doctor’s seeming madness, of course. But the audience sees through the trickery long, long before David does.
Sandler and Nicholson are perfectly cast – maybe too perfectly – in roles that allow them to rely on familiar shtick. As Dr. Rydell, Nicholson gets to arch his eyebrows into artful curlicues while suggesting – even as he attempts to sound most solicitous – an endless capacity for demonic mischief. As David, Sandler offers a broadly comical variation of his much subtler (and scarier) performance in Punch-Drunk Love. In the latter film, which cast him as a man choking to death on his pent-up rage, he played for keeps. Here, he plays for laughs, with only sporadic success. Heather Graham, John Turturro, Luis Guzman and Harry Dean Stanton are among the supporting players who periodically drop by for a few good laughs. Too few, however.
