(andPOP) - I was born on March 20. 3 + 20 = 23. My dad was born on May 18. 5 + 18 = 23. My brother was born on December 20: 12 + 20 = 32, which is 23 reversed. My mom was born on March 1, which... wait, that doesn't work. Adding the year doesn't work either. Or perhaps M (13) + A (1) + R (18) - nevermind, I'm at 32 already.
You can't help but think about such mathematics while watching
The Number 23; problem is, you'll either end up buying the concept of the "23 Enigma" along with its characters, or your jaw will slacken in amazement as they blindly follow it. Me, I couldn't believe these characters were buying it. It's apparently a thriller, but I didn't find
The Number 23 very thrilling. Often, I wanted to laugh at it. It's a decent concept, similar to last year's
Stranger Than Fiction, but unlike
Stranger Than Fiction, Jim Carrey's Walter Sparrow doesn't appear to be reading a very good novel. In the DVD commentaries the cast talks about how important it is to tell a good story, and how much we the audience love hearing good stories (I think that's true), but the fact is,
The Number 23 isn't a very good story.
It's shot well. There are some great camera tricks in it, especially when director Joel Schumacher takes us to the past of Fingerling, the detective (also played by Carrey) whom Walter Sparrow reads about, and who seems to be exactly like him. The grass and flowers outside Fingerling's rural childhood home, not to mention the house itself, look like photographs from a pop-up book as the camera swings through them. Schumacher also washes the apartment of a femme fatale in stark whites and blacks, leading to one of the only truly hair-raising shots in the movie.
But the film is schizophrenic. It clearly believes its central premise, but occasionally laughs at itself (the author of the book Carrey reads is "Topsy Krett" - say it aloud). Its outrageous "proof" that the "23 Enigma" is real is directly at odds with the faith the characters place in it. And ultimately the number 23 is a red herring - there's a completely different twist at the end, and it's not a very good twist either. The film is like M. Night Shyamalan's recent efforts,
The Village and
Lady In The Water, in that the story is original and everything fits together, but in a bad way (of course, if you liked those movies, you'll probably like this one too). Just in case you don't buy the twist, the movie spends 20 minutes walking you through it.
Jim Carrey has long been one of my favourite actors, and it pains me to say this is his least convincing performance. I was no great fan of the
Ace Ventura films, but this is the first time I can honestly say he appears to be acting, rather than inhabiting a character. He's a little better as Fingerling than as the mild-mannered Sparrow (odd, because Sparrow resembles his previous "serious" roles), but neither character is convincing. By the end of the film he inhabits Sparrow a bit better, but the initial portrayal still makes it hard to take the film seriously.
Extras include "16 deleted scenes including an alternate ending," which sounds far more exciting than it actually is (plot-wise, the "alternate" ending is the same, but with a different - and markedly worse - approach), a mini-documentary, hosted by Carrey, on the "23 Enigma," some achingly honest featurettes (with the possible exception of Virginia Madsen, who plays the dual role of Sparrow's wife, Agatha, and Fingerling's girlfriend, Fabrizia, I don't have a hard time believing for a minute these people were proud of what they were making), and an informative, anecdotal (but occasionally flowery) commentary by Schumacher.
I wanted to like
The Number 23. And to be fair, if you can past the twist, it has a good ending. But to get there, I had to put it on twice: once 47 minutes in and the second time while eating dinner.
If I hadn't needed to review it, I wouldn't have put it back on.
