Businessman Dave Buznik (Jack!) is falsely accused of air rage and forced to undergo anger management under the therapy of the unorthodox therapist Buddy Rydell (Sandler). Of the two of them, Rydell seems like the one in greater need of anger management, but who knows? Despite having swallowed their pride and praised Sandler's performance in Punch-Drunk Love, critics have only been marginally kinder to Anger Management than to previous Happy Madison productions. Nevertheless, if you're a fan of Sandler's (and you should know by now whether you are or not), you'll probably enjoy Anger Management a good deal more than Big Daddy and, maybe, The Waterboy. Nicholson's inspired casting pays off, whilst Sandler shows mastery of the material. If Punch-Drunk Love was the first Adam Sandler movie you enjoyed, there's no guarantee that you'll like Anger Management, but if it was one of many, you probably will.

New York writer Melvin Udall (Jack!) has not just one obsessive-compulsive disorder; he has all of them at once. He must wash his hands every time they come into contact with anything, like the external world. He can't eat except with sterilised plastic cutlery. He can't step on pavement cracks. And he can't talk to people without brutally insulting them. In fact he's better at saying exactly the wrong thing when he tries not to, which, in the course of the film, we see him do for perhaps the first time in his life. It starts when his gay neighbour (he hates gays and also, in an unrelated way, all of his neighbours) has a dog (he hates dogs) which he must mind for a few days. Then the only waitress willing to serve him doesn't show up at work one day. He grows fond of the dog, tracks down the waitress, and his life is changed forever. He even becomes a marginally better person. In short, this is one of those heartwarming stories about a truculent old bastard who learn that there's more to life than just... etc., etc. Formulaic? I don't think so, but I also don't care; I love the film either way.