I'm a big Adam Sandler fan and a big Jack Nicolson fan (I loved "Mr. Deeds" and "About Schmidt"), so I expected great things from "Anger Management." It's not that this film is bad, it's really not bad. It's just not solid. There are plenty of giggles and snorts, but there are also a handful of gags that fall dead.

It's really a rather average comedy, save for two very special moments. The first takes place in a stalled car in the right lane of a busy bridge. Dave (Adam) undergoes some very unusual therapy for his supposed anger management problem. The second moment occurs when Dr. Buddy (Jack) dares Dave to ask out a sexy woman at the bar. Both of these moments are A+, over the top, chillingly perfect. Ultimately, they'll pull this rickety little picture from a B to just barely a B+, despite a sort of unspoken, illusive drag I felt on the production.

That said, otherwise both Jack and Adam are both mildly amusing as is the script and the other players. If this were a student piece, I would have told the makers that they had something here, but it needed further fine-tuning. I'd have handed it back for revisions with the comment, "Make the whole film sparkle like those two special moments."

"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 every think would need anger management and then pair him with a therapist who makes him angry."