A Lively Cartoon.

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2015)

The Mask (1994): Dir: Chuck Russell / Cast: Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz, Peter Riegert, Peter Greene, Amy Yasbeck: Spellbinding visual extravaganza that addresses our inner person. Jim Carrey plays a bank clerk whose boss is difficult, his landlord is critical, and the woman he got concert tickets for turns him down. After his car breaks down on a bridge in the rain, he sights what he believes is a person in the water but upon diving in he retrieves only a wooden mask. Putting it on spins him about in mass energy becoming a human cartoon. He drools over a beautiful dancer at a nightclub leading to an outrageous dance number. Exquisite visual feast with Carrey's face shifting into various shapes. Terrific concept grows repetitious until it hits a grand slam finale. Director Chuck Russell references old cartoons and film noir. One major issue is that it is not given why the mask is in the water or how it got here. Other than that, Carrey embodies the role right down to the final showdown. Cameron Diaz is fetching as a dancer whose introduction is mysterious until she becomes a damsel. Peter Riegert is cardboard as an idiot police inspector. Peter Greene as the villain is also flat and conventional. Amy Yasbeck plays a double crossing bimbo who befriends Ipkiss and then sells him out to the villains. Its genre analysis is inventive and in a class of its own. Score: 6 / 10