Not smokin'

Rating: 5/10 (18 February 2011)

The Mask is a movie which certainly has some positive things going for it. But there are plenty of things working against the movie too. In the end it all balances out to leave us with a movie which isn't great but isn't terrible either. There are some good things to appreciate but not enough of them to prevent the movie from ultimately being somewhat disappointing.
The story follows shy, luckless, dorky Stanley Ipkiss. An ordinary guy. Ordinary that is until he finds an ancient wooden mask which when he puts it on transforms him into a wacky, green-headed superhero. He's a crazed whirling dervish with all kinds of wonderfully exploitable powers. He's got speed, he's got strength, he seems indestructible. And he can conjure anything he wants out of thin air. Stanley's luck is about to change. Now he can exact revenge on his tormentors. And he can get the girl. Yeah, there's always a girl.
This is a seemingly perfect movie for Jim Carrey, enabling him to just go nuts. A guy like Carrey can have a lot of fun with something like this. Which makes the fact that the movie so often seems devoid of fun rather puzzling. Oh, Carrey surely has his moments. But somehow, even with the bundle of energy that is The Mask at its heart, the movie often is a little dull. Too much dead space between Carrey's best moments. And while Peter Greene does fine in playing the movie's main villain Dorian Tyrell the rest of the bad guys leave a lot to be desired. You don't expect the actors playing the thugs in a movie like this to all be little Brandos and De Niros but is it so much to ask that the actors at least be competent? No such luck, it's strictly amateur hour with these guys. Some truly cringe-inducing acting. Everyone involved, from Carrey on down, is not helped by a script heavy on puns which are very hit and miss. Carrey is so manic that he can make most things work and at least extract a mild chuckle from the audience. Other performers aren't so fortunate.
The film has its good pieces. The visual effects are undeniably terrific, the film looks great from beginning to end. Carrey does an admirable job bringing his crazed character to life. And there is one thing about the movie which is indeed "Smokin!" That would be Cameron Diaz. She plays the aforementioned girl for whom Stanley longs. To say Diaz is a jaw-dropper in this, her film debut, doesn't even begin to do her justice. And besides looking ridiculously, impossibly gorgeous she shows she can actually act too, so that's a nice bonus. You've got Carrey, you've got Diaz, you've got a decent lead villain and those dazzling effects. But it doesn't all quite add up. The story lets down the movie. It's not consistently funny enough and there are times where the story really struggles for any momentum at all. At times, too many times, things are rather mundane. And mundane is not what you're looking for when you turn Jim Carrey into a whirling dervish superhero.