Review of Reign Over Me (2007) by Tarek F — 16 May 2014

Reign Over Me" shows a loving father that is completely depressed once he finds out his family died in 9/11. The setting is New York in 2007, which is six after 9/11. Its depressed character Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) is extremely lost with his life. He rides his scooter, plays the Playstation classic, "Shadows of the Colossus," collects albums, plays his instruments, and on a rare basis, remodels his kitchen. His life sheds up some light when his former roommate Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) starts to hang around with him.

Charlie and Alan are enthralled by each other's lives. Charlie's life is his interests in music, and Alan's life is his job and his family. However, Charlie has an issue-he always wants Alan to be in his life so he does not always think about the death of his wife and his children.

Charlie does not know how to live his life, as Alan does. Charlie closed his practice for dentistry and Alan ended up buying the property that was originally owned by Charlie-for Charlie, he feels that Alan stole his profession away by doing that. Sad that Charlie feels this way. Alan recommends counseling, so Charlie can get a hold of himself.

Charlie goes to therapy but does not make an effort to talk to the beautiful therapist Angela Oakhurst (Liv Tyler). He turns up his music and blasts out rocking with a pair of noise-cancelling Bose headsets. He is relieving his emotions, but not getting any better. When being depressed, this technique of Charlie is useful, but maybe holding in emotions for too long makes one feel not worthy. All Charlie wants to do is hang around with Alan all day, everyday. Viewers realize that as his anger gets ferocious whenever Alan declines to hanging around with Charlie.

Charlie and Alan's friendship is top-notch. They are truthful, they care about each other, and it just portrays the life of a friendship. With friendship, close friends always spend time together.

The director is Mike Bender who also directed "The Upside of Anger" a movie that is much more enlightening than this one. Binder also wrote the screenplay and the script left Sandler to be iffy about playing the role, because he was mortified by it. Once Sandler read it, he believed the script was incredible, and so is his performance in "Reign Over Me.".