The Number 23 Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)February 21st, 2007
THE NUMBER 23
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2007 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): 2/3
There are at least 23 reasons to avoid this snoozer of a stinker. As THE NUMBER 23 dragged on, our packed audience started laughing at it in derision and yelling at the screen. It's that bad. A movie about a guy obsessed with the number 23 and anything that would add up to or could be made into the number 23, it deserves to mocked, so I've given it just 2/3 of a star.
As directed lethargically by Joel Schumacher (8MM and BATMAN & ROBIN), the movie feels like it moves at most at 2/3 speed. Lumbering along, it's a stupid mess of a movie that tries to trick you into thinking it actually has something on its mind.
Jim Carrey plays two characters -- Walter Sparrow, a bored animal control officer, a.k.a. dog catcher, and Fingerling, a character in a book that Walter and his family are reading. The book, which is in bad shape, is one which was self-printed and published. It is the one and only novel by a writer whose name is an all-too-cutesy variation on the words "Top Secret." Virginia Madsen plays Agatha, Walter's wife, as well as Fabrizia, Fingerling's film noir girlfriend in the bizarre novel.
Fingerling tells -- "warns" might be a better word -- his reader to "imagine me as you." The increasingly paranoid Walter takes this advice and runs with it in what seems a certain trip into insanity.
Although the wackiness of the plot might remind some of Carrey in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, the latter film had both intelligence and drive, while THE NUMBER 23 is laughably bad and painfully slow. We do learn lots of trivia, such as, 9-11-2001 can be summed up as 23 and that 2/3 is a fraction yielding .666, which is the number for the devil.
As the film's agonizingly long 96 minutes are almost over, Walter explains to his wife that he doesn't want to "go on with the suffering." I certainly agree.
THE NUMBER 23 runs 1:36 minutes. It is rated R for "violence, disturbing images, sexuality and language" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
My son Jeffrey and his girlfriend Yasmin, both 17, gave it ***. He said he found it enthralling, although he wished it had ended sooner. He particularly liked film's lighting. Yasmin liked the story and compared it to THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT. Both of them had good words to say about Carrey's performance.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on -- of course -- Friday, February 23, 2007. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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