Stephen King Absolutely Hated One Jack Nicholson Movie

Stephen King is an opinionated fellow. Stroll through the fiction aisles of your local bookstore and examine the covers of newish novels, and you probably won't have to search long to find one bearing praise from Stephen King — which is touching because, in this age of distracted everything, it's nice to see one of the world's most prominent authors exhorting people to lose themselves in a book.

King isn't always a ray of sunshine though. He's infamous for his dislike of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" film adaptation, and hasn't held back on other cinematic interpretations of his novels. (Once, while panning the 1984 movie version of "Firestarter" in an interview with American Film, he took vitriolic aim at lead David Keith, who possessed, according to the writer's wife, "stupid eyes.") And when Entertainment Weekly started giving King column space in its printed pages back in the mid 2000s to rant and rave about all things pop culture, he was unsparing with his hatred for the latest music by Jewel, Beyoncé, and Celine Dion while also unloading both barrels on prestige films like "Antwone Fisher" and "The Life of David Gale."

Amusingly, he even once used his platform to shred a Jack Nicholson movie that wasn't "The Shining." Was it a contrarian takedown of a revered classic like "Five Easy Pieces" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?" King might be a fiery critic, but he's not that wild. No, he unloaded on a perfectly innocuous film that deserved neither plaudits nor invective.

"Anger Management" is a middle-of-the-pack Adam Sandler comedy that features one brilliantly ridiculous throwaway gag (a cat reacting to the trouser-bulging size of Allen Covert's penis), and one of the star's most bizarrely varied casts (unexpected appearances are made by the likes of Clint Black, Woody Harrelson, Heather Graham, Bobby Knight, Derek Jeter, and, ew, Rudy Giuliani). The plot is no great shakes — Sandler plays a mistreated corporate drone whose outburst on an airplane inspires a judge to give him round-the-clock care by an unconventional therapist — but it's more notable than, say, "Click" due to the presence of Jack Nicholson as said therapist.

And that's the film's biggest problem. You expect more out of the Sandler-Nicholson pairing. Also not helping is the fact that Sandler is playing a less nuanced version of his character from Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love." In any event, King was expecting more out of "Anger Management," and let his displeasure be known in EW. Here's what he wrote:

"Disliked 'Anger Management,' another in a long line of dopey, half-awake comedies. Yes, Adam Sandler is a funny man. Yes, Jack Nicholson is a fine actor and a funny man. But you have to earn it every time out, and here are two guys coasting along without a director ballsy enough to tell them it's time to wake up and earn the paycheck."

I feel like Sandler and Nicholson were engaged in the movie, and I definitely think the capable Peter Segal delivered the best version of this movie that he could. The problem was David S. Dorfman's uninspired script, which couldn't be enlivened, much less rescued, by a game cast. In any event, I'm not sure "Anger Management" received a harsher review, which makes me wonder what King thought of the utterly acrid "Grown-Ups."