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Back Shelf Beauties
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Fun with Dick and Jane This is a week where I feel sorry for two of my favorite actors. You'll learn more about my sadness for Bonnie Hunt by reading my review of Cheaper By the Dozen 2, but this review is about Jim Carrey and how he is destined to be a clown for the rest of his career. It's a real shame, and I blame us for it. He was great in more dramatic roles like Man On The Moon, The Truman Show and The Majestic, but Jim never received Oscar nominations or high praise for those. Instead, while George Clooney is allowed to grow up and make acclaimed films like Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck (and rack up all sorts of golden awards and nominations for them), Carrey is forced to dress up like Cher in Fun with Dick and Jane. That's right, LAUGH CLOWN LAUGH. The world is telling him to act silly, put himself through physical torture and entertain us. Just don't try to be serious anymore. It's a shame because he deserves better than this movie, which almost took away my Christmas cheer. Set in 2000 (for no apparent reason other than to shove a bunch of Gore/Lieberman for President posters into the movie), Carrey stars as Dick Harper - a hardworking, true believing employee at Globodyne Corporation. He gets a huge promotion to Vice President of Communications as what he thinks is a reward for years of strong service, but it quickly becomes apparent Dick has been set up (or, for those more into vulgar language, Dick has been dicked). In his first few days on the job, Globodyne is enmeshed in a major corporate Enron-like scandal, the stock price plummets, the pension plan is worthless and everyone at the company loses their jobs, but Globodyne's founder and president (Alec Baldwin) sold his stock and made off with hundreds of millions of dollars (don't they always, like how cockroaches will still walk the earth when we are long gone). Months of fruitless job searching yields nothing but heartbreak, low paying gigs and bills too costly to pay off, so Dick and his wife Jane (Tea Leoni) turn to a life of crime to keep their middle class dream of life alive. Will Dick and Jane get caught? What will happen when they plan their biggest caper? It would be easier to have fun with Dick and Jane if the film had a coherent plot instead of falling apart into a series of scenes forcing Carrey to mug for the camera and act as silly as he possibly could. Columbia should just call this movie Jim Carrey Does Stupid Stuff because that's almost the only thing the film has going for it. Director Dean Parisot and the screenwriting trio can't seem to make up their minds what the movie is about. First, it's about Dick's struggle with unemployment and the jobs he has to take to pay the bills. Then, we have he whole Les Miserables idea of stealing to survive (without the French ladies singing and dancing, it's just not as entertaining). Finally, Fun with Dick and Jane becomes a revenge fantasy movie. Maybe each writer wrote a different plot, and Parisot patched it all together without any ability to develop one of those plots. Left without a good movie, Leoni and Carrey muster up enough laughs on their own to keep the audience in their seats. Eventually, we just stop giving a darn about all of it fitting together and have to laugh at Carrey's hijinks as he tries to kill time during his unemployment, tries to do his best as a greeter with a major department store, and makes new friends while serving some time as a day laborer. Leoni also is game as she gets into the spirit with some physical comedy of her own leaping over counters, playing dress up and such. It's all too ridiculous to be taken as real or seriously, but this is a comedy, so you go with the flow. However, it would be easier to go with the flow if the entire movie was as wacky as these scenes. Consistency is an unforgiving taskmaster. Fun with Dick and Jane is a very forgettable movie that is worth going to see if all of the following are sold out - King Kong, Harry Potter, Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Producers, Syriana, Rent, Just Friends, Pride and Prejudice, The Ice Harvest, Shopgirl, The Squid and The Whale, Walk the Line, Jarhead and Good Night, and Good Luck. 1 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2005 - WaffleMovies.com
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