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Shelf Beauties |
The Number 23 My name is Willie Waffle,
and the letter W is the 23rd letter in the
alphabet! My
favorite baseball player as a kid was Don
Mattingly of the New York Yankees, and he wore the number 23! What does all of this add
up to? A movie with
a cool premise, and a cruddy
ending. Carrey stars as Walter
Sparrow – an animal control officer celebrating his birthday
on February 3 (2/3
= 23!). While on
the way to pick up his
wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), he gets delayed, which gives her the
chance to peruse
a nearby book store, and pick up a mysterious novel, The Number 23 by
Topsy
Kretts. As Walter
reads The Number 23,
he starts to see parallels to his own life, and even events and facts
seem to
be taken from his life and placed in the book.
As he gets deeper and deeper into the tome, Walter
becomes obsessed with
the book and the number 23, and those around him fear for the worst. Is Walter going insane? Will he do something
harmful to himself or
others?  Do yourself a favor and
avoid spending the $23 it will cost to buy two tickets and some popcorn
to see
The
Number 23. Director
Joel Schumacher
and writer Fernley Phillips start off with a promising premise that
draws you
in and gets the brain ready to play along and solve the big mystery. However, Schumacher is
trying much too hard
to create an eerie and creepy tone with incessant, heavy handed music
and dark
lighting, but it is to make up for the lack of material provided by
Phillips. In between finding all of
the 23’s (some are obvious, others are more subtle), Phillips
and Schumacher
don’t advance the plot very much, and need to provide a few
more dramatic
turning points along the way. Sure, The
Number 23
has a sense of humor about itself with some funny dialogue and the
actors playing it a bit for fun at those moments (some of
Carrey’s one-liners
and the 23 discoveries will make you giggle on purpose), but, after
what feels
like a movie searching for a way to end, the big payoff is horrible. We get very little basis for
the movie’s “shocking” climax, very few
clues to its existence before it is
dropped on us like a fat man squeezing into the seat next to you in the
theater
once the trailers have started to play and it feels like Phillips came
up with
the most implausible, ridiculous, shocking twist possible and tries to
shove it
down our throats. Along
the way, Walter
never ends up in too many dangerous or dramatic situations, and we
could use less
of our hero seeing himself and his wife as characters in the book
(there is a
way to make these scenes more relevant to the movie, and Schumacher
doesn’t go
for it). Carrey is fine as the reader
descending into madness, but I wish Schumacher had him let loose a bit
more. The guy is
supposed to be going insane, so
let Carrey start screaming and ripping the place apart.
Plus, he narrates major portions of the film
as we hear him reading the book and see the scenes played out by Walter
and
Agatha, but Carrey doesn’t quite set the right tone with his
narration. He wants
it to sound like an ominous pulp detective
story, but it feels and sounds a little too forced and stiff. While I hope cineplexes
across the world will play the movie in theaters 2 and 3, you might
want to
sashay over to theater 4 in hopes it is playing Breach or Bridge to
Terabithia.
Ther Number 23 is rated R for violence, disturbing images sexuality and language
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