The Number 23

Wow, “The Number 23” is bad!

At first glance, one would have to think that the pairing of Jim Carrey and Joel Schumacher wouldn’t be capable of such inane rubbish, but clearly they’ve outdone themselves. They’ve managed to take a fairly intriguing concept and reduce it to nothing more than a jumbled mess of a movie, whose bleak and dreary tone prevents the audience from ever really taking it seriously. It is indeed a sorry excuse for a Hollywood thriller.

Had it not been for a sultry performance from Virginia Madsen, I probably would’ve walked out after the first ten minutes.

Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a dogcatcher who becomes hopelessly obsessed with the number 23, while reading a book his wife gave him for his birthday. Everything he reads seems to parallel his own life and he begins making bizarre connections that somehow relate back to that god-forsaken number. His name, driver’s license, and social security number all add up to 23 and his entire existence appears to revolve around those two digits: “Caesar was stabbed 23 times”, “9+11+2001=23”, and "2/3 =.666" to name just a few.

As the film goes on, it’s clear that writer Fernley Phillips went overboard on the whole theory of the 23 enigma. Each correlation becomes more exaggerated than the last and the film ultimately gets swallowed up by its own harebrained material. When they brought up that Ted Bundy was executed on the 23rd, I was about ready to throw in the towel. As a student of Criminology, I will proudly say that he was actually executed on the 24th, which pretty much throws a wrench in whatever credibility the film may have had.

As for Carrey, he seemed lost in unfamiliar territory and was undoubtedly out of his comfort zone. I understand his need to take on more serious roles, but this is not the way to go about doing that.

His magnificent work in films like “The Truman Show” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” seems like a lifetime ago, which for him, is a clear indication that he needs to return to what made him a star in the first place. He’s a phenomenal comedic talent, but we just need him to show it.

Director Joel Schumacher’s ill-fated attempt at creating an effective occult thriller was doomed from the start and completely ruined by an ending that made everything else seem like a total waste of time. What looked like an engaging thriller is actually a dull and pointless story of a man with too much time on his hands that never really adds up.

- * out of 4