A Candy-Coated 1990s Madcap Patchwork

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2010)

I guess the reason why I liked this movie so much as a kid can't be safely detached enough from the reason why I found it so pleasant revisiting it on a whim. So I'll just get it out of the way now: Yes, I still get choked up when Stanley's dog Milo cries for him outside of the jail. OK? There. But it's not just that. It's that this dog, really named Max, is not just a prop; he's a bona fide character. Few movies have taken it upon themselves to really give the dog something interesting to do, but this dog not only emotes to tear jerking effect but also performs exciting unexpected feats, following the bad guys' car, intercepting the mask from the bad guys, all done to please an audience of children, of course, but nonetheless done exceedingly well to that end.
The opening shots of The Mask give the impression they were recovered from a distraughtly shoestring 1950s sci-fi movie. Marine salvage operations bring about the breakage of an antiquated trunk that's lay for lifetimes on the bottom of the cove, and a peculiar wooden mask drifts to the surface. Shortly thereafter, unhappy bank teller Stanley Ipkiss, an amiable geek played by Jim Carrey, is gazing into the murky waters after a frenzied night of embarrassments. When he glimpses the mask drifting with some debris, he for some inexplicable reason thinks it's a man in trouble and jumps in to save him. All he retrieves is the mask.
Metamorphoses are naturally the heart of comic literature. Billy Batson yells "Shazam," Clark Kent scurries into a phone booth, Bruce Wayne slides down the pole, and invariably an inconsequential pushover befits a comic-strip hero. No wonder pubescent kids react to these stories so fiercely. Think about what happens to Stanley when he dons the mask. He's instantly changed into a delirious cyclone of aggravated liveliness, clad in a banana-yellow zoot suit, a intersection congealing the Joker, Aladdin's genie, and rudiments of The Shadow.
One of the crucial design choices must've entailed the Mask character's makeup. It renovates Carrey's facial appearance into a much bigger, comic-bookish caricature, while all at once the facade is still able to authentically move. The effect is a movie character who appears half genuine, half comic strip. And director Chuck Russell is up to utilizing special effects to shift easily between what might be possible and what is unquestionably not, as the Mask spins like a fast-tempo jazz hydrometer and gleefully triumphs in circumstances that would've overwhelmed poor Stanley.
The plot starts with luckless Stanley utterly smitten with statuesque client Tina Carlyle, Cameron Diaz's debut. She trifles with him in the bank while taking clandestine videotape of the vault for her boss, the violent Dorian Tyrel (a quite well cast Peter Greene), who manages the Coco Bongo Club, where, sure enough, Tina's the catlike diva. The plot otherwise features Richard Jeni as Charlie, Stanley's sounding board, who familiarizes him with the charades of the Coco Bongo Club; Peter Riegert as a cop who notes the Mask's tie lookss to be of the same cloth as Stanley's unbelievable pajamas; and Milo, Stanley's dog, who's no less than as cunning as his master.
It's also this manic energy and 1990's madcap patchwork that holds together a narrative that is every trace as imitative and baseless as it can be. The art design on the movie goes for the loudest possible 1940s film noir aspects of plenty of superhero comics, and the Coco Bongo Club seems reprocessed from Criss Cross or Out of the Past. Stanley's apartment looks like an adolescent boy's bedroom; all that's lacking is a sign on the outside of the door saying "No Girls Allowed!" The appearance of the film is as much entertainment as anything else. It's been alleged that one of the crucial traits of an actor is a capacity to share the delight he takes in his performance. You could say The Mask was anchored in that.