Reel Men

The film begins with a federal marshal intoning "This is a very difficult time for our country" and ends with the singing of the national anthem, performed before Rudy Giuliani himself. Between these moments comes a journey of emotional healing, undertaken by an average American Joe (or Dave, actually) who can rightly describe himself as "a pretty nice guy." Too nice, perhaps. Although this quiet hero lives underneath an Army recruitment billboard, Dave has grown used to letting others push him around. He can--he must--learn to stand up for himself. So must we all.

I affirm that the preceding paragraph is entirely descriptive and contains no interpretation, except for that "So must we all" part, which is hard to avoid. Such is the message delivered to a troubled America by Anger Management, the movie in which Adam Sandler shows the way toward national renewal by getting angry, and also really feeling his lust for Jack Nicholson. I recommend it to everyone.

Now, I know there are skeptics among you. Some dismiss all Hollywood movies as commercial products, incapable by nature of rising to the level of art. (When art lovers want to watch moving images these days, they turn to Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle. Barney has taken to embedding DVDs of his films into limited-edition sculptures, which then sell for the price of a nice vacation home.) Others admit that Hollywood movies may occasionally become artlike; but since the medium is collaborative and famously prone to compromise, there are people who doubt that an Adam Sandler comedy can mean anything, except in the haphazard, semiconscious way that calls for ideological decoding. That Anger Management might develop a coherent argument, point by point--that it might think--is itself unthinkable.

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