Movie Review Lemony Snicket's As Series of Unfortunate Events

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) 

Directed by Brad Silberling 

Written by Robert Gordon 

Starring Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Catherine O'Hara, Meryl Streep

Release Date December 17th, 2004 

I am unfamiliar with the books of the Lemony Snicket series written by Daniel Handler. I can however appreciate the wit and nerve it must take to write on the book jacket that your story is very dark and depressing and recommend that readers find something more pleasant to read. Like any one of a curious nature, when someone tells me not to do something I’m even more intrigued to try it.

It is with that same sense that I went into the film version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which used a similar campaign as the book to entice people into theaters. Simply tell people not to come, and why, and they will come in droves. Unfortunately those appealingly off-putting ads are more prescient than expected. Lemony Snicket is, as they tell you, dark and disturbing and maybe you should take the advice and find another movie.

This is the story of the Beaudelaire children, or rather the Beaudelaire orphans after their parents perish in a fire. Violet (Emily Browning) is the oldest, an inventor with a keen sense of danger. Her younger brother is Klaus (Liam Aiken), an inquisitive child who reads voraciously and retains every piece of information. And finally, their younger sister two year old Sunny (Kara & Shelby Hoffman) who’s preternaturally smart, she has her own language, and loves to bite things. Anything at all.

After being informed of their parents death the children are taken by their court appointed lawyer Mr. Poe to their closest living relative Count Olaf. By closest living relative, Mr. Poe means that he lives only four blocks away which is a hint of the cluelessness to come. Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) is a failed actor living in a rundown mansion that is the sort of place your dared to visit on Halloween.

Violet, ever the inquisitor, immediately senses that Olaf is not taking the children in out of the kindness of his heart. Indeed he even tells them that he has his eye on the fortune they are to inherit. As soon as Olaf takes on legal custody of the children he plans to murder them and run off with the inheritance money.

The story is narrated by the shadowed visage of Lemony Snicket (Jude Law). Glimpsed only in silhouette, Lemony Snicket tells this tale with wit and misdirection. As he says, and the title well states, this is a story of a series of unfortunate events that befall these plucky kids. They must outwit the murderous count and weather a series of wacky parental stand ins that include Billy Connelly and Meryl Streep.

This is not a bad story but as it is presented by Director Brad Silberling it’s disturbing and highly off putting. This is supposed to be a family movie yet we see murders, blatant child abuse, and a Jim Carrey performance that hits more wrong notes than The Cable Guy.

Just because your narrator states in the opening scenes that your movie is unpleasant and recommends that you go see another film while still can does not give you an excuse to make a film as unpleasant and disturbing as this movie is. Maybe a familiarity with the book somehow makes the themes of murder and abuse palatable but as presented here they make me question how a major children’s entertainment company like Nickelodeon Pictures became involved with it.

As in movies like this the children are geniuses the adults are all clueless dolts. Even the great Meryl Streep can’t escape this hackneyed trope, she plays a shrill agoraphobic who inherits the children and must protect them from Olaf. Sadly, and, of course, she’s so clueless that when Olaf arrives in a terrible costume she falls for him. Other clueless adults include Cedric The Entertainer as a clueless cop and Catherine O’Hara as a clueless Judge.

What is good about the film is the set design and cinematography that evokes the best work of Tim Burton and the silent era gothic films. Emmanuel Lubezki handles the Cinematography and delivers Oscar quality visuals. Set Designer Rick Heinrichs is also award worthy especially for his work on Streep’s lake adjacent home on the side of a cliff.

Director Brad Silberling crafts the work of his cinematographer and set designer quite well but could have done a better job reigning in his clowning preening star who does not steal scenes as much as he invades them with a sickening presence. Carrey’s attempts at improv humor are a counter point to his character's malevolent nature and just do not work. I find that a murderer, especially one in a KIDS movie, had better be darn funny to make me laugh otherwise it’s just creepy and out of place.

The only funny moments in the movie go to the baby who speaks in gibberish but has cute funny subtitles. The rest of the film is like an attempt to glom on to the Harry Potter formula but without the magic and without the intelligent appealing and benevolent characters.

For fans of the books, maybe you can find something to like. For fans of technical filmmaking absolutely. But for general family audiences where this film is targeted I suggest you take the films advice and see what’s playing in theater 2.

Documentary Review Jim and Andy and the Great Beyond

Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond (2017) 

Directed by Chris Smith

Written by Chris Smith

Starring Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman, Danny Devito 

Release Date November 17th, 2017

Man on the Moon was one of my favorite movies of 1999. I had no idea what went into making the movie at the time I saw it in 1999. Had I been more aware of the tabloid crazy story that was going on behind the scenes I likely would have loved the movie even more. Jim Carrey has now detailed the making of Man on the Moon in a new Netflix documentary that debuts November 17th and it is a remarkable and fascinating insight into the mind of an artist

On the surface, Man on the Moon was a straight-forward biopic of the always not so straight forward comedian Andy Kaufman. Directed by the legendary Milos Forman, Man on the Moon had the air of an Awards friendly true-life story of a man who had fascinated millions of people before and after his life came to an end. Even with it being the first of Jim Carrey’s attempts to become taken seriously, there was a prestige to the movie that was innate.

Then stories began to emerge about Jim Carrey’s behavior. In 1998 the film became fodder for the tabloids as Carrey’s shenanigans seemed to be overwhelming the film. In particular, Carrey had a very public run-in with co-star and real-life Kaufman antagonist, professional wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler. Carrey was said to have gone off the deep end, requiring everyone to call him Andy or Andy’s bizarre, obnoxious character Tony Clifton. Rumors were spreading that Carrey’s behavior was sinking the film.

Now, with the release of the Netflix documentary Jim and Andy The Great Beyond, we have a notion of what things were like behind the scenes of Man on the Moon. Now we know that all the tabloid nuttiness that was reported nearly 20 years ago was pretty much true and helped to make Man on the Moon the remarkably authentic and fascinating film it became. Using Carrey’s own behind the scenes footage, shot by Andy Kaufman’s real life girlfriend Lynn Margulies, we get the whole story, and we know that sometimes madness is creativity at its most pure.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review: Dark Crimes

Dark Crimes (2018)

Directed by Alexandros Avranas 

Written by Jeremy Brock

Starring Jim Carrey, Martin Csokas, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Release Date May 18th, 2018

Published May 18th, 2018

Dark Crimes is a whole lot of nonsense. While I appreciate that Jim Carrey is taking a risk and playing a role well outside our perception of him as a performer, Dark Crimes is a risk that should not have been taken. This Poland set mystery involving a murder among a violent sex cult is so poorly constructed and so nonsensically plotted that even if Jim Carrey had been brilliant in his offbeat, against the grain, performance, it wouldn’t have mattered against this awful piece of storytelling.

In Dark Crimes, Jim Carrey stars as Tadek, a veteran detective in a major city in Poland. At one point, we’re told that Tadek is the last good cop in Poland but the movie does little to demonstrate that. Tadek is investigating the murder of a man who was found bound in an S & M style and dropped in a river. Tadek’s top suspect is a writer named Kozlov (Martin Csokas) whose latest book, a thriller, describes a murder exactly like the one Tadek is investigating.

The details depicted in the book, which we hear as Tadek is listening to the audiobook of Kozlov’s bestseller, are uncannily like the murder and Tadek is certain that Kozlov is the killer. That is, until he continues down the rabbit hole of this sex cult which is made up of some of the most powerful men in Poland, including Tadek’s work rival, Greger (Robert Wieckiewicz). Thus, Tadek had better be right before he goes so far he can’t come back.

That’s an okay thumbnail of Dark Crimes but it contains a good deal of inference on my part. Dark Crimes is so nonsensically assembled that it is impossible to actually know what is happening. Nudity and an orgy and a murder give us a sense of what the plot is about, and it certainly makes for a jarring opening to the movie, but then the movie abandons the sex cult in favor of one on one staring contests between Carrey and Csokas that stagnate an already sluggish story.

The assemblage of Dark Crimes is almost painful to piece together. A number of scenes appear to have significant revelations but the movie is so clumsy that I am not sure what was being revealed in what appeared to be intended as revelatory scenes. One scene finds Carrey reacting to something for a good long while and when we finally see what he’s reacting to, it’s so tangential to the plot of Dark Crimes that his intense psychic pain barely registers.

Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose work with Lars Von Trier likely made her time on Dark Crimes feel like a cakewalk, co-stars here as a woman abused in the sex cult. She’s also the girlfriend of Kozlov though she tells Carrey that the relationship with Kozlov is over before the two sleep together in one of the least sexy sex scenes I’ve ever seen. Is Gainsbourg’s character a frightened victim seeking protection or a sexy scheming killer? I have no idea and the movie is too vague and poorly put together for me to even venture a guess as to the nature of Gainsbourg's character or any other character for that matter, including Carrey's Tadek. 

The ending is the most nonsensical of bit of all. I watched and then re-watched the end of Dark Crimes in the vain hope that I could figure out what happened and two viewings yielded no definitive answer. The final moment is captured so poorly, literally at a bizarre distance at a cantilevered angle, that the fate of Jim Carrey’s character is unknown as the credits began to roll.

I will say, aside from a desperately unneeded close-up of Carrey's twisted face during a love scene, ugh, Dark Crimes is great looking movie. The cinematography, especially on a high quality Blu-Ray, looks phenomenal. Poland looks beautiful and foreboding, a character in its own right that in a better movie would matter to the plot. But not here, not among the skill free nonsense on display in Dark Crimes.

Dark Crimes is undoubtedly among the worst movies of 2018. Jim Carrey’s bold decision to play a character wildly out of his comfort zone, all the way down to a silly sounding Polish accent, is almost laughably terrible. I admire the big swing Carrey takes here but perhaps he should reign in the ambition just a little. Maybe start with a clever little independent feature delivered by a promising young upstart director. Try going to film festivals and looking for young and hungry filmmakers who could use your star power to get a movie made. Most importantly Jim, stay the heck out of Poland.

Movie Review: A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol (2009) 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Robert Zemeckis 

Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright, Carey Elwes

Release Date November 6th, 2009 

Published November 5th, 2009

Words associated with Robert Zemeckis's endeavor into CGI, Motion Capture and Digital 3D: Groundbreaking, lifelike, extraordinary, creepy, scary, goofy, rubbery. Opinions have varied on the success of the now three films that Mr. Zemeckis has crafted with his unique technical skills and toys. The Polar Express was magical in story but creepy in rendering. Beowulf was masterful in many technical aspects and still skin-crawlingly awkward in others. Now comes A Christmas Carol and again opinions vary.

Charles Dickens' legendary tale of skinflint turned softy Ebenezer Scrooge is among the most famous holiday tales ever told. There are numerous adaptations featuring as varied a group of players as Kelsey Grammar, Bill Murray even the Muppets who have given life to Scrooge over the years since Dickens popularized the concept of karmic retribution for lack of being charitable. Disney turned him into a duck. Children, even today, can recite the basics of the story from memory.

On Christmas Day the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his late business partner Jakob Marley. He is told that he will be visited by three ghosts. Indeed, haunted he is by the ghosts Christmas past, present and future. Each offers a lesson to Scrooge that if he does not change his miserly ways he will not be mourned by anyone, he will die penniless and alone. Reformed by this experience, Scrooge buys a giant Christmas goose for his longtime, terribly put upon assistant, Bob Cratchit and pays the medical bills of Bob's son Tiny Tim. Scrooge also, finally, attends the Christmas of his loving, kind nephew Fred. 

Dickens' tale is brilliant in its simplicity. But, why bring A Christmas Carol back again? According to Director Zemeckis it was one of his favorite stories of all time. All well and good but does his love justify yet another take on this oft told tale? No, frankly. Especially since Zemeckis brings no new insights to the story. Jim Carrey's Scrooge is faithful to a fault and leaves one to wonder: who hires Jim Carrey and binds him to a character so thoroughly that no wacky schtick can escape?

There is hardly a whisper of whimsy or moment of mugging mirth. Why bother hooking Carrey's well known face up to all that mo-cap technology when you have restrained him so tightly to such a dark, draconian character. Even in Scrooge's happy turn in the end Carrey remains restrained, allowing only for a smile and a brief jig. No actor wants to be shackled to a persona but Jim Carrey is JIM CARREY, his persona overwhelms the notion that he can simply be plugged into a character and have audiences simply accept a straightforward, non Carrey-like performance. 

A Christmas Tale lacks life or any form of whimsy whatsoever and that is not something that works for an animated film the animated spirit is greatly lacking. The one thing it seems that Robert Zemeckis has brought to A Christmas Carol is a dark vision of Dickens' dark words. Dickens' imagery has always been of the nightmare variety, this version of A Christmas Carol captures that vision with frightful faith. I would warn against taking children younger than 13 to this film.

That makes this version of A Christmas Carol more of an adult feature and that would seem to defeat the purpose of the adaptation and animation. This should be a story for kids but parents who take young kids will only come away with frightened youngsters. Sure, their is the happy ending to salve the wounds but many parents and kids will not make it that far.

Far too scary for young children and too well worn for adults, this version of A Christmas Carol seems at a loss to justify its existence. Why another take on this story? Was it just an exercise of the technology? A chance to be faithful to the dark images of Dickens that many adaptations had softened? I cannot tell you and I wonder if Mr. Zemeckis could either.

Movie Review: Yes Man

Yes Man (2008) 

Directed by Peyton Reed 

Written by Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel 

Starring Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, John Michael Higgins

Release Date December 19th, 2008 

Published December 18th, 2008 

In Liar Liar Jim Carrey played a lawyer who could not tell a lie. This, naturally, lead to a number of awkward situations that allowed Carrey to whip himself into a comic frenzy. Now in his latest feature Jim Carrey plays a loan officer who must say yes to everything. If you think this premise allows Carrey to once again whip himself into a wild comic frenzy, you may as well skip the rest of this review. I'm kidding, please keep reading.

Carl has been a sadsack since his wife left him 3 years ago. He rarely leaves his apartment and when he does it is just to rent videos. His best friend Peter (Bradley Cooper) is getting married and expects him to be there for him but even his best pal can't drag him out his funk.

It is not until he attends a self help seminar, at the urging of a strange former acquaintance, Nick (John Michael Higgins), that Carl finally comes out of his shell. The seminar is hosted by Terrence Bundley (Terrence Stamp) whose schtick is getting people to say yes to every opportunity.

With some further prodding from Nick, Carl says yes to giving a homeless man a ride miles out the way. The homeless guy uses up Carl's cell battery and the drive runs him out of gas. However, while filling a gas can Carl meets Allison (Zooey Deschanel). They have instant chemistry and Carl finds the yes to everything strategy could have some real perks.

From there we get a series of scenes that allow Jim Carrey to act more and more goofy and have more and more good things happen to him. That is until, the predictable scene where saying yes finally gets Carl in trouble. A valuable lesson in moderation will be learned while Carrey all the while flips and flops about in search of laughs.

To be fair, Carrey finds plenty of laughs in Yes Man. The guy is a natural comic talent who can't help but stumble into laughs and Yes Man is a movie designed specifically to play into Carrey's strengths. Each scene gives Carrey reason to launch into some kind of comic riff. Some of them are laugh out loud, some, like a Harry Potter themed costume party, lay there in search of a punchline.

The structure of Yes Man may play to Carrey's strengths but the choppy, predictable narrative is in the end terribly unsatisfying. A series of set ups and punchlines fail to serve as a character arc or really a story. There is romantic chemistry between Carrey and Zooey Deschanel but that too is undercut by the lack of a compelling narrative.

Funny in bursts but short one compelling story, Yes Man is a movie for hardcore Carrey fans and no one else.

Movie Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 

Directed by Michel Gondry 

Written by Charlie Kaufman

Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson

Release Date March 19th, 2004

Published March 18th, 2004 

Jim Carrey's attempts to move into “legitimate acting" are often maligned even before they are seen, even by people who call themselves fans. It seems that whenever someone leaves their comfortable, often-mediocre niche we Americans have set aside for them. We go out of our way to shove them back in with harsh and often unfair conjecture. Jim Carrey is a very obvious victim of this niche society.

His latest attempt to escape his niche is the Charlie Kaufmann scripted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Carrey plays a somber, sweet, romantic lost soul while Kaufmann's script provides the weirdness that Carrey usually provides with his physical schtick.

Carrey is Joel Barish who one day decides to blow off work and take a train to his favorite beach. Nevermind that its winter. On the train ride back, Joel meets Clementine (Kate Winslet), an acid-tongued wild child with an obvious sweetness beneath her punk veneer. They begin a tentative flirtation that is about to lead to Joel's bed when suddenly the opening credits roll and the film begins again.

From there, we are lost in a time warp of Joel's memories and sadness. After Joel and Clementine broke up, Clementine went to a place called Lacuna Corp and had all of her memories of Joel erased. Out of spite, Joel goes to Lacuna to do the same to her. With the guidance of Lacuna's founder Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) and his staff, Joel is told that all of his relationship can be eliminated with a procedure that is technically brain damage, but is only “on par with a night of heavy drinking.”

Joel agrees to the procedure, which is to take place in his apartment while he sleeps. A pair of Lacuna technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) come to Joel's apartment after he's asleep and spend the night erasing his memory. Once Joel is actually undergoing the process, he realizes there are some memories of Clementine he does not want to give up. His fight to save some of those good memories is the thrust of the plot.

Who doesn't have a relationship that they would consider erasing from their memory? For me it would be Michele, my high school girlfriend. We were together for three years as a couple and several years as friends afterwards. We loved and we hated in almost equal measure the entire time we've known each other. For all of the pain that she caused me and I caused her there are a number of really good times that I would not be willing to give up. That is the central theme of the film and the way it's explored on the screen is not just the film projecting emotion on to the audience. Rather, the audience is a participant in the emotion.

The film is not exactly as straightforward as I describe it. Writer Charlie Kaufmann and director Michel Gondry have a number of unique twists and turns that make Eternal Sunshine an amazing, mind-bending experience. It's an old school science-fiction storytelling device using technology, in this case a rather low-tech technology, to tell a very human story. Sci-fi without aliens or complicated special effects, sci-fi just used to tell a good story in a very different way.

This is a rather uncomplicated, almost simplistic way to write a relatable story. Painful breakups are a universal experience and Kaufmann uses that universality as a jumping off point to a different way to tell a sad, romantic story. There have been movies that explored the same themes of love and loss. What Kaufmann does is what the best modern screenwriters do, take a conventional idea and twist it. Plots that have been done to death can still be done well if you give them at least one unique twist.

With the help of a Michel Gondry's visual mastery, Charlie Kaufmann found more than one unique twist he could give to the love and loss story, the romantic comedy and the sci-fi picture. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film that should be shown in film classes for years to come as inspiration for original ideas from traditional sources.

For Jim Carrey, this is yet another brilliant performance that will go unnoticed. The film is unlikely to make many waves at the box office and despite positive critical notice, the March release of the film dooms its Oscar hopes. Carrey can still take heart however in the one truth of great art. It's never appreciated in it's own time. Maybe years from now someone will dig this film out of a vault with barely a memory of Carrey's schtick and discover Carrey's talent.

Movie Review The Majestic

The Majestic 

Directed by Frank Darabont 

Written by Michael Sloane

Starring Jim Carrey, Amanda Dettmer, Martin Landau, Hal Holbrook, Bob Balaban

Release Date December 25th, 2001

Published January 30th, 2002

The 50's are a decade easily evoked onscreen. Simply have kids with seriously greased hair, drab clothing, long dresses for women, business suits and fedoras for men, and the ubiquitous white picket fences. There you have the fifties, throw in a couple of cultural touchstones like the first decade of TV, I Like Ike buttons, and the Hollywood Communist witch-hunt and you've got a decade ready made for the movies. The decade is the easily evoked backdrop for Frank Darabont's The Majestic, the story of a Hollywood scriptwriter accused in the witch-hunts and asked to name names or be blacklisted.

The scriptwriter is Peter Appelton; played by Jim Carrey as a somewhat arrogant but affable guy who, to impress a girl, accidentally attends a communist rally and now faces the wrath of the House un-American Activities Committee. Peter is set to testify in two days but before that happens he has an accident that leaves him with amnesia and strands in the small town of Lawson, California where he is mistaken for the army hero son of the local theater owner Harry, played by Martin Landau.

Both Carrey and Landau are good but neither can overcome the screenplay, which aims at the heartstrings while ignoring the brain. Carrey does have an effective scene in front of the House un-American activities committee where he explains his attending the communist rally as simply a guy being horny.

Beyond that scene, which is smart and funny, the rest of the film is crammed with emotional set pieces so obvious that you know everything that's coming well before it comes and then are annoyed at how they are resolved. The ending is truly uninspired as if someone decided the film desperately needed a happy ending even if it was going to have to force it and compromise the little integrity the film had.

Jim Carrey is a good actor, he proved that in Man On the Moon and The Truman Show. In The Majestic he seems a little desperate as if he chose this film for the sole purpose of courting Oscar and that desperation comes through in a couple of forced scenes, one with a dying Landau and another later in a cemetery. Still, Carrey is the strongest part of The Majestic which suffers not only from its weak screenplay but also Darabont's 50's setting, chosen because of the Commie Hollywood witch-hunts. Other than that, Darabont relies on those tried and true 50's set pieces like crewcuts, fedora's and the like.

I prefer the "noirish" take on the decade as presented in films like LA Confidential with hipster lingo and the seedy underbelly. The type of setting where the witch-hunts were more meaningful because Hollywood stars would attend underground meetings in secret locations in places like the seedy smoke-filled halls of an Elmore Leonard novel. The Majestic prefers uplift to impact and that is its main failure.

Movie Review: Bruce Almighty

Bruce Almighty (2003) 

Directed by Tom Shadyac

Written by Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe, Steve Oedekirk 

Starring Jim Carrey, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Phillip Baker Hall

Release Date May 23rd, 2003 

Published May 22nd, 2003 

The concept must have seemed like a home run even without a script. Jim Carrey as a regular guy who takes on God's powers. Heck do you even need a script for that? Simply turn on the camera, let Carrey contort himself, add a catchphrase, special effects and you’re done. Thankfully the producers of Bruce Almighty decided to put together a script to go with their concept and star. It also helps to have a top notch supporting cast including Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Aniston who make Bruce Almighty rise above your usual Jim Carrey flick.

In Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey is Bruce Nolan, a TV reporter who longs to move up to the news anchor position. His current job as a feature reporter covering stories like a record breaking chocolate chip cookie aren't exactly what Bruce had in mind when he got into journalism. At least things are good at home where Bruce has a great girlfriend, Grace (Aniston), though her sister Debbie (Lisa Ann Walter) hates him. Bruce doesn't realize Grace wants to get married, he's too wrapped up in his problems to notice.

Bad things keep happening to Bruce. Mostly it's little things like his dog not being house broken, or traffic making him late to work. But when Bruce finds out that he has lost the Anchor job to rival co-worker Evan (Steve Corell), Bruce really flips, and worse he does it on live TV while covering a story. His on air outburst gets him fired, which leads to a fight with hoodlums in the station parking lot and a fight with Grace at home.

With all that's happened to him it's easy to understand why Bruce would lash out at the almighty, and God responds. Sending message through Bruce's busted pager, God (Morgan Freeman) summons Bruce to an empty warehouse. After convincing a naturally skeptical Bruce that he is indeed God, he proceeds to give Bruce all of his powers, saying “let's see if you can do any better.”

Bruce's idea of better is a little different than God's. Mostly it's settling scores with his rivals at work, impressing his girlfriend and teaching his dog to use the toilet. Bruce also enjoys a little revenge on the hoods that beat him up. Is there anything funnier than a monkey crawling out of a guys butt? See this film and judge for yourself.

There are also prayers to deal with. Prayers that come to Bruce in the form of millions of voices in his head. His brilliant plan for dealing with the prayers leads to couple of pretty good sight gags and the potential for some real chaos that doesn't quite live up to expectation. You would think a gag where Bruce makes everyone’s prayers come true might do a little more than have everyone win the lottery on the same day.

There is an obvious in-joke in Bruce Almighty, a joke that relates Bruce's problems at work mirror Carrey's real life problems. Like his character’s longing to move from funny features reporter to serious news anchorman is an exact corollary to Carrey's longing to be a serious actor. The joke isn't overplayed and has a nice payoff that gives the audience insight into the actor’s psyche in real life.

Director Tom Shadyac still has some growing up to do, but he is beginning to mature a little as a competent comedy director. He has learned that the setup of a joke is as important as it's punchline. He has learned more about telling a coherent story that unfolds with a logical progression to a believable conclusion.

However, Shadyac still needs to curb his affection for schmaltz. If you saw his attempt at pathos and dramedy in Patch Adams, you know what I'm talking about. There are moments near the end of Bruce Almighty where the film threatens to drown in syrupy sweetness. Thank heaven for Morgan Freeman who keeps the sweetness from becoming cavity inducing with his charm, wit and calming influence. His mere presence relaxes both audience and star and makes Bruce Almighty a much better film for having cast him.

Bruce Almighty marks a return to Jim Carrey's strength, making people laugh. Not that he can't do drama, I am one of a small group who thought he was sensational in Man on the Moon. I believe he has the potential to something truly fantastic as a dramatic leading man, but much like Jerry Lewis and Charlie Chaplin before him Carrey's strength lies in making people smile and in Bruce Almighty he does it just enough to leave you with a smile as you leave the theater. That makes it an easy film to recommend. -

Movie Review: Dr Seuss' Horton Hears A Who

Horton Hears a Who (2008) 

Directed by Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino 

Written by Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio 

Starring Carol Burnett, Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett

Release Date March 8th, 2008 

Published March 7th, 2008 

We get a lot of animated movies every years and a number of very good ones. The artists of modern animated features are, more often than not, responsible caring, smart people who have your childrens best interests at heart. That is certainly the case with the team behind the latest Dr. Seuss adaptation Horton Hears A Who.

Jim Carrey gives voice to Horton the elephant, one Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel's most enduring characters. In the land of Nool Horton is popular with the little ones and teaches them about the forest. His non-traditional teaching style is frowned upon by the sour Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) who fears Horton is causing the children to use their imaginations.

The Kangaroo grows even more sour when Horton takes to talking to a small speck atop a flower. You see, according to Horton, there is a tiny population on that speck called Who's. Horton has made contact with the Who's Mayor (Steve Carell) and has vowed to protect the populace and get the speck to the safety of a mountaintop sunflower.

Horton rescued the speck after it was dislodged from another flower, something that has caused big trouble for the who's from earthquakes to massive shifts in weather patterns. If they don't get to safety soon they will be destroyed. Standing in Horton's way is that dyspeptic Kangaroo and her mean sidekick Vlad (Will Arnett) a vulture who vows to destroy the speck free of charge.

The dramatic stakes are high but Horton never gets to serious about it's situation. This is first class kids entertainment with both big laughs and smart subtext. Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino were the minds behind this adaptation and they have kept much of Dr. Seuss's material intact, not the least is his undying respect and reverence for a child's mind.

The exceptional voice cast also keeps things light and fun. Jim Carrey, Steve Carell and Carol Burnett do a tremendous job finding just the right tones for the lead roles. Meanwhile, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill and Amy Poehler offer terrific support.

Horton Hears A Who is as smart as it is funny. Underlying the story of Horton and the Mayor's heroic journey are ideas about spirituality and environmental concern that maybe Dr. Seuss didn't intend but become prominent in the expansion of Horton from a small book to a feature length film. The movie is about believing in something whether you can see it or not. It celebrates the imagination but also the capacity to believe in something beyond reason. Horton cloaks faith in the veneer of modern animated humor and somehow never comes off preachy.

The animation of Horton could not be a better representation of Dr. Seuss's classic style mixed with modern animated technology. The opening image of a drop of water on a leaf is breathtakingly realistic and there are striking images throughout Horton. Images that catch the eye without overstatement. Impressive and not overwhelming, a delicate balancing act. This is one terrific little movie. If you have kids then you must have Horton Hears A Who, a new animated classic for your collection.

Movie Review Fun with Dick and Jane

Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) 

Directed by Dean Parisot

Written by Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller 

Starring Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins 

Release Date December 21st, 2005 

Published December 20th, 2005 

Remakes are an inherently lazy project. No matter how well made and recreated they are, remakes are  still telling someone else's story and making a profit on it. Laziness is the hallmark of the remake of 1977's Fun With Dick and Jane. With a talented cast including Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni and a script polish by the very funny Judd Apatow, Fun With Dick and Jane is an all the more depressing effort for the talent involved.

Dick Harper (Jim Carrey) has a great job working in corporate communications for a massive corporation called Globodyne. Things are just about to get even better for Dick when the company CEO, slimily portrayed by Alec Baldwin, decides to promote Dick to vice president and put him on TV to talk up Globodyne's latest financial numbers on a Moneyline-esque cable show. Unfortunately as Dick is putting a smiling face on the numbers the stock tanks live on the air. Dick, as the new face of the company, is completely screwed. The CEO has bankrupted the company, including all the severance and pension funds, and is in the wind, leaving Dick and the company's chief finance officer (Richard Jenkins) to take all of the heat.

This could not be worse timing for the Harper family because Dick's wife Jane (Tea Leoni) has just quit her job as a travel agent to spend more time with their son who is being raised by the nanny (the kid had even adopted the nanny's own broken English accent, in an ugly, awful gag).  Now with both Dick and Jane out of work, and Dick a virtual pariah in his chosen field, the family faces losing all of their accumulated wealth and their home.

After unfortunate attempts by both Dick and Jane to work at new jobs, Dick at a Wal-mart clone and then as a day laborer, in yet another awful gag, and Jane as an aerobics instructor and product tester, the frustrated couple turn to armed robbery to solve their money troubles. Using their son's toy weapon and the rationalization that they were screwed by the system, the couple sets about robbing convenience stores, coffee shops and eventually even an attempted bank heist before finally turning to revenge against the CEO that put them in this predicament.

Fun With Dick and Jane fails because director Dean Parisot and writers Judd Apatow, Nicolas Stoller and Peter Tollin fail to establish whether they are attempting broad slapstick or dark satire. Most of the film plays to star Jim Carrey's strength, broad physical comedy. However, the story of a family losing everything and turning to desperate measures to keep their home is not a story that lends itself to big slapsticky laughs. Thus, the film fishes around searching for laughs in broad set pieces unable to reconcile those with the film's dark subject.

The filmmakers try everything from funny costumes (the couple dressed as Sonny and Cher with Carrey as Cher) to movie parody (Dick and Jane driving a stolen car into a storefront dressed as the Blues Brothers), to irreverent racial humor, but nothing connects with anything more than mild amusement. And, the racial humor is downright offensive. Watching it you don't laugh as much as you squirm in discomfort. 

Director Dean Parisot was the talented director of 2000'sGalaxy Quest, a good natured ribbing of the Star Trek series. There is nothing groundbreaking about that little movie but it hits its target well with good-natured parody. Parisot may be the wrong director for the much darker Dick and Jane in which he irritatingly attempts to force broad comedy out of narrow material. Parisot never finds the right angle on the film's corporate satire and fails miserably in establishing why Dick and Jane must turn to crime in order to survive.

The corporate scandal that costs Dick his job is merely a quick way to get him out of a job so we can get to the supposedly funny attempts at crime. There are a couple of unconvincing scenes of both Dick and Jane trying to work low paying jobs and failing miserably but these scenes fail to help us understand why they must turn to crime. We can feel the plot forcing them toward crime because the crimes are where the supposed comedy is and the filmmakers show their desperation to get through a few setup scenes so they can get the stars into their funny costumes.

Because Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni are such terrifically talented comic actors there are a number of solid laughs in Fun With Dick and Jane. A scene where the couple commit a home invasion robbery dressed in black ninja gear and voice disguisers is funny for the way the couple are like children playing with new toys. Another scene where Dick and Jane ponder their situation while sitting in the unfinished hole where their new hot tub was to be shows each actor's ability to connect with us on a sympathetic level.

Dick and Jane by the standards of decent society aren't good people. They commit serious crimes that are humorously treated by director Dean Parisot but we are never allowed scenes that might help us forgive them their crimes. Simply saying 'it's just a comedy' does not excuse the fact that our protagonists are unpunished criminals. The 1977 version of Fun With Dick and Jane, I'm told, established its heroes as Robin Hood outlaws whose crimes have an undercurrent of social conscience. Yes they were robbers, but when they knocked over banks they also attempted to burn the debt records of other troubled families so that maybe they to could be debt free.

No such moralizing in the new version where the motivation is solely material and selfish. The modern Dick and Jane are concerned about maintaining their social status and regaining their material wealth. A scene where Dick and Jane retrieve their LCD big screen television using some of their ill-gotten gains is played as a moment of triumph with their young son celebrating wildly. I guess, like the nanny, that television was another parent to the kid, which is yet another bit of sardonic humor the film fails to capitalize on.

Spoiler warning!

When at the end our heroes target Baldwin's corporate criminal and end up turning Robin Hood and stealing his money and giving it back to the employees he screwed, we are supposed to admire them. But you can see the plot gears turning as the filmmakers try to redeem these lost characters with one act of deus ex machina, the hand of god, putting everything right with the world in less than 10 minutes screen time.

Fun With Dick and Jane ends with a dedication to the corporations like Enron that have been subjects of the biggest financial swindles in history. Unfortunately, what was intemded to play as an ironic thumb in the eye of these corporations comes off as more of an honest thank you for inspiring this film's failed ideas.  Fun With Dick and Jane never develops into any kind of satire of corporate scandals. The corporate crimes in the movie are a mere backdrop for the flailing slapstick physical comedy. 

Fun With Dick and Jane is yet another sad, lazy Hollywood remake. The work of slacking geniuses picking up paychecks rather than actually making a funny movie.

Movie Review: The Number 23

The Number 23 (2007) 

Directed by Joel Schumacher 

Written by Fernley Phillips 

Starring Jim Carrrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston 

Release Date February 23rd, 2007 

Published February 22nd, 2007 

Jim Carrey has struggled to overcome his reputation as just a clown for years. He has done well with dramatic turns in The Truman Show, Man on The Moon, and The Majestic. With his latest picture he once again works against type this time as a potentially psychotic family man in the thriller The Number 23. He should probably have stuck with comedy. The Number 23, directed by Joel Schumacher, is a goofball thriller with an interesting premise that never works because Jim Carrey is simply the wrong actor for this role.

Walter Sparrow (Carrey) has a life that is rather mundane. As a dog catcher he doesn't seem to have much to do from day to day, when there aren't dogs to catch. Aside from waiting for his wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), to finish work everyday he's a pretty boring and lonely guy. One day, when Walter picked up Agatha from work he found her in a bookstore. There she purchased for him an odd used book called The Number 23.

Walter is skeptical of the book at first; but two chapters in he is hooked. The book, it seems to Walter, is mirroring his life. The description of the lead character Fingerling, played by Carrey himself in dream sequences, matches Walter's childhood experiences almost exactly. As the story progresses Walter see's more parallels with his own life, especially in relation to the book's central theme about the number 23 which Walter links everywhere in his life. Eventually the book predicts Walter will murder his wife and he must find some way to keep that from happening.

Directed by Joel Schumacher from a script by Fernley Phillips, The Number 23 is a paranoid thriller that indulges an interesting conspiracy but sadly degenerates into a series of ever less believable twists before crashing and burning in the final 20 minutes. The idea behind the film is interesting. The number 23 has in fact been linked by conspiracy theorists to all sorts of tragedies and the script for The Number 23 initially makes good use of this.

From the moment the first trailer for The Number 23 hit theaters Jim Carrey fans have worried that they had another Cable Guy on their hands. They were right. The Number 23 is yet another manic, out of control performance for the funnyman, only this time without the few spare laughs that other film managed. Carrey simply can't find the right pitch for this type of character. He can do morose and he can do manic but when he combines those attributes as he did in Cable Guy and as he does in The Number 23 his performance becomes messy and over-indulgent.

I love the idea of this film. With a tighter script and a different lead actor; I believe The Number 23 could be a dense, conspiracy thriller. In reading about the number 23 enigma I found that the number is linked to the Illuminati and other rich conspiracy targets. Those who have obsessed over the number, those who suffer from an illness called Apophenia; the experience of seeing patterns in random meaningless data, have connected the number 23 to numerous historic tragedies from the Oklahoma City bombing to the siege in Waco Texas to 9/11.

Did you know that Oklahoma City and Waco both happened on 4/19. 4 +19 is 23. No matter that Timothy McVeigh intimated that he chose that date for the Oklahoma City bombing because it was the date of the Waco siege, the conspiracy theory about this ridiculous number is more fun. A movie about that kind of mania would likely be much more fun than the mess that is The Number 23.

I'm certainly not suggesting that there is a role Jim Carrey can't play. However, clearly there are roles he shouldn't play. Psycho, conspiracy-attled killer simply doesn't suit Carrey. It didn't work in The Cable Guy and it works far less in The Number 23. Granted, a third act train-wreck in Joel Schumacher's direction does Carrey few favors but even with Schumacher's bad direction, Carrey is so wrong for the role that even good direction likely could not save The Number 23. \