Ahead of its time

Rating: 9/10 (8 May 2018)

First, I would like to say that without Jim Carrey; the Grinch, Ace Ventura, (the mask) and many other classic movies, wouldn't have been half of what they are. The Mask is an older movie that stars Jim as Stanley Ipcus, an overly nice bank teller who's kind of a push over. One day, Stanley meets Tina (Cameron Diaz), a dancer at the local night club and a bombshell. Stanley doesn't have the guts at first to ask her out, but he finds an old Norse mask (it belongs to Loki, god of mischief) by accident. When he puts on the mask, he becomes a flirtatious cartoon character that has superpowers and a large amount of confidence, something Stanley lacked on the outside. I love this movie, and I think that compared to movies around its time, they went for a new style mixing cartoon comedy and real characters. This allows for a younger audience to enjoy it as well as the parents of said kids. Yes, there are definitely some corny scenes, especially the fight scenes, but this sort of laid the framework for future movies that would do this type of interaction. I gave it a 9/10 because it had my attention the whole movie, Cameron Diaz is a bombshell, and Jim Carrey couldn't have played the Mask any better (in my opinion). One of the best scenes in this movie is where the mob boss makes one of his henchmen lay down and he hits a golf ball off a tee in his mouth. This scene was particularly powerful because the rest of the movie is relatively calm and less violent but this scene had a lot of potential for it. The mob boss ends up letting him go and this power play scene showed no questions to who's in charge, and what he's willing to do if you cross him. Of course, at this time in film history, happy-ever-after endings were quite popular, and this was one of them. The final fight scene is quite unorthodox, but Milo saves the day and the way they incorporated all the characters backstories and tied them together, really made the movie amazing to me.