The Number 23 means....

Rating: 6/10 (25 February 2007)

Jim Carrey is on the trail of an author who wrote what appears to be a murder mystery that parallels a real-life case. Carrey isn't sure which, and off he goes in obsessive pursuit. He ends up identifying with the book's main character, a seedy PI who eventually commits murder. One may be reminded of IDENTITY or STRANGER THAN FICTION as Carrey works to clear the name of the man convicted of the murder. Ultimately, the author is revealed and all's well, more or less. The astute viewer will have guessed the killer's ID half way through. Now for the bad news: Carrey is not good enough an actor to pull this off. He does not have what I would call the gravitas. With his strange hairdo and odd antics in this movie, I was reminded of Ace Ventura and kept waiting for Carrey to begin mugging and laughing like a hyena. Virginia Madsen is fine as his long suffering wife and murder victim in the novel. I enjoyed a moment here and there, but not the whole movie. Director Schumacher has come a cropper with this one. It would make a perfect 90-minute feature on AMC or Channel 13/PBS. As a big-budget theatrical number that I paid good money to see, it falls down long before the sweet-as-molasses conclusion. See PRESUMED INNOCENT for a similar plot and much more intriguing ending.