The public and Jim Carrey deserve better.

Rating: Null/10 (18 July 2003)

Jim Carrey is hilarious but this movie let me down. The whole last hour derails from the horribly stale screenwriting which focuses entirely on the cliched relationship troubles between Carrey and Aniston. I was grimacing at the screen. The picture starts off really promising. Morgan Freeman is totally cool, as always but at times he does seem like mere set decoration; it feels like they filmed his whole role in one day. Carrey is exceptionally good, he does have the "power", zooming along in breakneck comedic pace and he's really funny. Regretfully, instead of making us continue to laugh the writers decided to make some quasi-serious statement on theology equipped with the standard maudlin movie score which drags the whole mood and eventually the whole movie under never to recover. The screenwriters even get the serious stuff wrong because they hinge everything on Jennifer Aniston's completely underwritten, superficial character.

I would truly like to know what goes through the minds of those executives in Hollywood. Do they just greenlight any script if they have a name attached to it? If it's all about money then these guys are penny-wise and dollar foolish. They know they can make money off of Jim Carrey but wouldn't it suit everyone's interest to make the best picture they can? In Preproduction, the script supposedly goes through tons of drafts. I know there are great writers out in Hollywood but I'm beginning to think "Barton Fink" was a documentary.
Some other user asked if it seems like movies today are getting worse and worse and they definitely are. What's so insidious about the movies today is that they're not just plain awful like midnight movies or golden turkeys or razzies- that kind of charming badness. Today even the films that have our best talent in them wind up incredibly weak and it has to be the writers and producers' fault. They must have contempt for the public. They continue to pass off the same formulaic stuff over and over like it's Colonel Sander's secret recipe but it doesn't taste good any more. I guess demographics show that enough ticket buyers keep showing up so why should Hollywood care but wouldn't you think that movies should be even better in this day and age? Now that television, which has never made qualms about being a totally sponsor-driven enterprise, is plagued by all the unreal "reality" programming Hollywood is getting away with murder saving tons of dough on junk that previously would only be suitable for cable access. Aren't there any artists left? Why doesn't Hollywood make taking a trek to the cinema a worth while experience?
It's all very sad and my only hope is that God is a movie buff and will send a lightening bolt over to the powers that be in Hollywood because as far as I'm concerned we're in artistic Armageddon.