Carey film cannot decide its genre

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2007)

Coming off his most unfunny comedy last year ("Fun With Dick and Jane"), Jim Carey has turned to stark drama in Joel Schumacher's dark and dreary jaunt into cinematic paranoia, "The Number 23." Unfortunately for all involved, this picture can't decide whether it wants to be a murder mystery, a family drama or a psychological thriller. This confusion, as well as a story that meanders all over the map, leaves viewers bored, confused and generally stupefied.
In fact, as a thriller, it comes in above the truly horrible "Stay," but far below Johnny Depp's "Secret Window." Carey plays Walter Sparrow, a disgruntled animal control officer who is bitten by a mongrel dog one day. This causes him to be late to meet his wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen, "Sideways"), which in turn allows her to browse an old bookstore and purchase a beat up tome called "The Number 23."
When Walter reads this book, he believes it is his own life story, but cannot quite put his finger on some of the events. These scenes are accompanied by unnecessary sequences of Walter's fantasies regarding certain chapters in the book. He imagines himself to be "Fingerling," the lead character, a private detective who beds several women and even murders one of them.
The more he reads, though, the more he slips into this paranoid world in which 23 becomes the center. The number of letters in his name add up to it, as well as other more trivial equations. Soon, he is writing these calculations on his furniture, the walls and even his body. His descent into madness and this bizarre behavior also begins to drive a wedge between Agatha and his teenage son, Robin (Logan Lerman, "The Patriot").
Here, the movie tries to become an old-fashioned murder mystery with Walter as a tough-talking gumshoe (in a series of fantasy flashbacks). In "real" life, he goes to prison to interview a man charged with murdering a missing coed; tries to trip up the book's author (Topsy Krets) by sending 23 huge boxes of Styrofoam peanuts (yep) and even tries to dig up the woman's body in a public park. All of this leads us to a conclusion that Stevie Wonder could have seen from a mile away.
Carey, who excels in comedy as well as drama (at times), is fine here, as is Madsen; but the scattergun script and lack of clear, coherent direction doom this enterprise and makes one feel that one has been through this before.
And that's not a good thing.