What has Jim Carrey been up to lately? It seems that since an eventful 2004, when both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events were released, all we have seen of the star of Ace Ventura fame was the horrid comedy Fun With Dick & Jane, which was released in 2005. So, after a dormant 2006, Carrey has finally returned to the silver screen in The Number 23, which will have plenty of Carrey fans scratching their heads.
The Number 23 is the latest entry in a string of films with which Carrey has tried to establish himself as a “serious actor.” Unfortunately, after seeing this film, it is pretty obvious that he should stick to comedy. In fact, if one were to rank all of his films in terms of quality, this would probably end up as his 23rd best film (gasp!).
The Number 23 revolves around Carrey’s character Walter Sparrow, a dog-catcher who lives a normal life with his loving wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen, Sideways) and his son Robin (Logan Lerman, Hoot). This is true until a “series of unfortunate events” leads to Agatha finding the book The Number 23 at a local bookstore (appropriately called A Novel Fate). It is no surprise that the book catches her attention because it is placed very conspicuously on the shelves and its cover is an obnoxiously bright red. She insists that Walter read the book, even though he says he’ll “wait for the movie,” which was written by Topsy Kretts. In case you didn’t notice, that sounds a lot like “Top Secrets”; scary, huh?
Sparrow becomes obsessed with the book and the number, finding several parallels between him and the book’s lead character, Fingerling. They both read detective novels as kids, they both had troubled childhoods and they both play the saxophone. Sparrow soon starts finding the number 23, which haunts Fingerling in the novel, everywhere he looks. The date he was born adds up to 23! Assigning numeric values to the letters in his name ends up equaling 23! His social security number and driver’s license number 23! This is how the whole movie proceeds. There are so many things that end up being 23 that it’s ridiculous.
As the novel Sparrow is reading proceeds, he sees more and more similarities between Fingerling and himself. Certain events in the novel begin to concern Sparrow, and he begins to distrust everyone around him. When he is completely convinced that the novel is about him, he goes out to find the novel’s author, all the while seeing 23 everywhere he goes. The ending has a disturbing twist that can be predicted about 23 minutes before it happens.
Even after watching the movie, it is hard to determine exactly what it was. Is it a detective story resulting in someone’s murder? Is it chronicling an obsessed man as he drives himself to insanity? Is it simply another “stylish” psychological thriller, failing to be either stylish or thrilling? One cannot be sure; in fact, there are at least 23 different ways one could describe this mess of a film. In the end, the movie’s tagline rings true: “The truth will find you.” This truth comes about two thirds into the movie when you realize that you want your $8 back.
