Stephen King is an authorized fellow. Stroll the fictional aisles of your local bookstore and peruse the covers of new novels, and you probably won't have to look far to find words of praise from Stephen King—which is poignant because, in this age of distraction, it's nice to see one of the world's foremost authors encourage people to get lost in a book.

However, the King is not always a ray of sunshine. He is known for not liking it The film adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's The Shiningand does not hold back from other film interpretations of his novels. (Once, while watching the 1984 film version of Firestarter in an interview with American moviehe took aim at lead David Keith, who possessed, according to the writer's wife, "goofy eyes.") And when Entertainment Weekly began giving King's columns space in its print pages back in the mid-2000s to rant and to rejoice in all things. pop culture, he hasn't been sparing with his hatred of the latest music from Jewel, Beyoncé and Celine Dion, and he's also unloaded both barrels on prestigious films like Antwon Fisher and The Life of David Gale.

Amusingly, he even once used his platform to destroy a Jack Nicholson movie it wasn't "The Shining." Was it the opposite takedown of a revered classic like Five Easy Pieces or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? King may be a fierce critic, but he is not that wild. No, he unloaded on a perfectly harmless film that deserves neither praise nor abuse.

"Anger Management" is a middle-of-the-pack Adam Sandler comedy which features one brilliantly funny throwaway gag (a cat reacting to the size of Allen Covert's penis with his pants bulging) and one of the star's most bizarrely diverse casts (surprise appearances from the likes of Clint Black, Woody Harrelson, Heather Graham, Bobby Knight, Derek Jeter and Rudy Giuliani). The plot isn't much of a shocker—Sandler plays a bullied corporate drone whose plane trip inspires a judge to give him around-the-clock care from an unconventional therapist—but it's more notable than, say, "Click" because of the presence of Jack Nicholson as said therapist.

And that is the film's biggest problem. You expect more from the Sandler-Nicholson couple. It also doesn't help that Sandler plays a less nuanced version of his character from Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunken Love. Either way, King expected more from Anger Management and let his displeasure be known in EW. Here is what he wrote:

"I didn't like 'Anger Management,' another in a long line of nutty, half-witted comedies. Yes, Adam Sandler is a funny guy. Yes, Jack Nicholson is a great actor and a funny guy. But you have to earn it every time. out, and here's two guys riding along without a manager, enough to tell them it's time to wake up and earn their pay."

I feel like Sandler and Nicholson are committed to the movie, and I definitely think the capable Peter Segal delivered the best version of this movie that he could. The problem was the uninspired script by David S. In any case, I'm not sure Anger Management has received a harsher review, which makes me wonder what King thought of the extremely harsh Grown-ups.