Anger Management

Anger Management is a 2003 comedy film, starring & executive produced by Adam Sandler, with Jack Nicholson and Marisa Tomei.

The story is about a timid man, David Buznik (Sandler), who is enrolled in Anger Management after he incurs the wrath of Selective Enforcement by lightly tapping a flight attendant on the arm. Hilarity Ensues when the judge assigns him a Cloudcuckoolander named Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson, whom he met on the airplane) as his therapist.

---

Tropes used in Anger Management include:

• Affectionate Parody: Of Sandler's past roles as a guy with anger problems. Here, he can't express anger.
• Angry Black Man: Who, for a refreshing change, is angry for a legitimate reason.
• Batman Gambit: Everything after the air marshal incident. Not "including"; mind you, the marshal was having a really bad day.
  • And Arnie Shankman.
  • Actually, the whole movie was a Batman Gambit. The air marshal incident was just, as we say in math, a "removable discontinuity".
• Brick Joke: The seat David was about to get was him between two fat passengers before he sat with buddy. The end of the movie reveals that the air marshal ended up taking that seat, adding to his bad day.
• The Cameo: Rudy Giuliani and Woody Harrelson.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Either parodied or invoked. Sandler is tasered by an air marshall after bugging a stewardess for headphones while she over reacts to every small thing he does.
  • Sandler jokes to Nicholson that his mother died earlier in the movie, and how does he get back at him? He makes Sandler (almost) cheat on his girlfriend, and then tells her that he did anyway.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Linda and Andrew went to the same college, Brown University together, and they may or may not have had sex.
• Fake Nationality: Galaxia/Gary.
• Fiction Isn't Fair: If it wasn't for the Rule of Funny (as well as David's timidness), he could have sued all of them.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: When you get Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson together, this is more-or-less unavoidable.
• Have a Gay Old Time: Buddy forces Dave to pull his car over on the side of the highway and sing the song "I Feel Pretty." Dave's intonation of "I feel pretty and witty and gay" indicates that he recognizes this trope, and he's feeling both emasculated and humiliated.
• I'm Not Angry
• I Uh You Too
• Ivy League for Everyone
• Jack Nicholson: The Guardian`s review of the film described it as starring "Jack Nicholson playing a Jack Nicholson who's not as good a Jack Nicholson as the Jack Nicholson he played in About Schmidt or As Good as It Gets, but a better Jack Nicholson than the Jack Nicholson he played in Somethings Gotta Give.
• Mistaken for Gay: Buddy thought that David was gay because he makes clothes for cats, despite how many times David had told him that he had a girlfriend. Of course, he knew all along.
• Mistaken for Racist: "You people." To be fair, he was just having a bad day.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: There's no way Buddy can know what he's doing. Oh wait, it turns out he does.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Chuck, despite the fact that the war he fought in, Grenada, literally lasted less than two months.
• Teach Him Anger: Oh, yes.
• Transsexualism: Galaxia/Gary.
• Trickster Mentor
• What the Hell, Hero?: As part of his "therapy," Buddy takes Dave to a Buddhist retreat to confront the bully who used to torment him in school, who has now shaved his head and renounced all violence. Although the former bully now bears no ill will against Dave, Buddy proceeds to goad him into getting angry all over again, prompting a scene where Dave beats the guy up and "wedgies" him. Buddy then pulls a water gun on all the other monks, and he and Dave barely escape the compound with their lives.
  • To be fair, when Dave confronts the bully about pulling his pants down in front of his childhood crush, the bully is completely unapologetic about it, and in fact mocks him even further, proving that even though he's a Buddhist monk now, he's still very much a dick.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Played straight with the flight attendant, but later subverted when he hits the cocktail waitress, by accident.