This Week in Cinema (03.12.07)
The Number 23
By Beth Capper
Published: March 15th, 2007 | 9:00am
Jim Carrey may play a dogcatcher in Joel Schumacher’s pseudo-philosophical drama, The Number 23, but his character is a far cry from Ace Ventura Pet Detective.
In part an examination of numerology — although its really uncertain whether all this bunk about the number 23 really has any basis in fact — and in part a post-modern murder mystery, this film gets more ridiculous with every plot turn and remains so right up until its conclusion.
Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23 after he discovers a self-published novel in a used bookstore about a man who believes that the number is ruling his life. As Sparrow continues to read it, his life begins to mimic that of the author, and sometimes it seems he might even be the author (can you see where this is going yet?). To make matters more confusing, Carrey plays both the part of the man reading the book and the man he’s reading about, and the plot continues to spur off into further meta-narratives until it becomes difficult to determine where it might all end up.
Schumacher’s film is really about whether memory maketh the man, morally speaking, or whether we are who we are, be it a murderer or a saxophone player (and incidentally Carrey is both in this), regardless of whether we can remember it. All this theorizing about memory brings to mind another Carrey film — the excellent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Maybe it was Carrey’s role in Sunshine that turned Schumacher onto him for the lead in this shambolic film — which sometimes feels like a half-assed attempt at a Charlie Kaufman script.
But, to be fair, Carrey’s acting abilities aren’t really the problem here. Instead, its Schumacher — his terribly-realised plot (riddled with holes) and unbelievable characters — that makes The Number 23 so disastrous. Could we really expect much more from the director of Phonebooth, a film almost as ill-conceived as this one?
Although there is little that redeems this film, the most compelling parts are those that focus on Sparrow and his family trying desperately to untangle the story behind the mysterious book — scenes which sometimes bring to mind the post-modern detective tales of New York novelist Paul Auster. However, maybe it’s just that these scenes serve as a welcome relief from the third-rate film-noirish depictions of the action of the novel that makes them all the more compelling and enjoyable.
As for the rest of the film — which is poorly shot (see film-noirish depictions), poorly scripted (see half-assed Charlie Kaufman rip off) and often, poorly acted (although they didn’t have much to go on) — well, let’s just say it’s entirely deserving of every bad review its been getting, including this one.
Issue #26
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