Yes, the warning signs are all there – two stars as big as Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson in a movie released in April. You may not know this, but ordinarily, a good movie with stars this big would be saved for, say, Memorial Day weekend, or even, Easter weekend. I entered the theatre mighty skeptical.

My skepticism was soon rewarded and eventually gave way to sleep. I’m long past asking how these movies get made. The simple truth here is that Adam Sandler has his own production company. That’s how. The guy has made a fortune and he’s not even forty years old. It’s just that he’s using up his good name quickly.

Look at just some of the cast here – Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, Woody Harrelson, Bobby Knight, John Turtorro, Rudy Guiliani, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Heather Graham. When Adam calls, stars respond. But for how much longer? This is probably his fourth or fifth straight stinker. Not that “Billy Madison” or “Happy Gilmore” belong in the Movie Hall of Fame, but they are masterpieces compared to this.

I’ll skip over the “plot” as comedies don’t have to have one. They just have to be funny. And I leave plenty of room for error – say how about one funny bit out of three or four? I think “Anger Management” gets it about one in twenty times and I’m being charitable.

Here’s an example – Adam is on the toilet making a phone call and a co-worker, a woman, bursts into the stall asking “why are you in the ladies room?” Adam answers, “because I heard it’s cleaner in here”. The lady responds, “not after I get through”. I rarely go through an entire scene like that but that should give you some idea how bad things get.

This may be a first for me – I nodded off four or five times and didn’t miss a thing. Meaning this movie is so basic and so awful I picked right up on the next pathetic scene. The movie is practically a collection of non-sequiters. My basic rule is this - if a movie or a TV show has to depend on a bunch of cameos by people like baseball players who cannot act, it has serious problems. “Anger Management” has serious problems.

What the studio people are counting on is a big first weekend before the word gets out. Hey, I’m here to get the word out early. I will say this one positive thing about the movie – we do get to see the real angry Jack Nicholson that took that golf club to a guy’s car a few years back. Yep, not much acting going on there. I give “Anger Management” a “2.0” on the scale.