An exhausting exercise in grasping at straws

Rating: 5/10 (11 April 2007)

Joel Schumacher is one of the singularly most inconsistent modern day directors, with strongly watchable films such as "A Time to Kill", "Falling Down" and indeed even "The Lost Boys", but with relentlessly poor films that dilute the quality of his resumé. As if putting nipples on the Batman suit wasn't a severe enough offense, this man is guilty of advertising his upcoming films so well that every time I'm there. The Number 23 is such a film -- suspenseful in trailers and content -- but so tremendously, fearsomely, unbearably so-so when it gets down to business and the theatre is dimmed.
What the film is, more than anything, is blatant conspiricists fodder, a masturbatory love letter to those who seek a correlation in everything, and thus find a correlation in everything. The numerology obsession that Jim Carrey's character develops does not actually serve a significant point in the film, and is undoubtedly only present to instill the 'chill-factor' in audiences. It is a crying shame then that this is one of the least impressive features of 'The Number 23', as it's basically 2 very long hours of grasping at straws: "23! That's 2 and 3, and if you divide 2 by 3 you get 0.666! OMG!" It gets old soon: "What?! 14 plus 9? That's 23!" followed by shocked, horrified faces. Everything from buses, dates and names seem to conveniently adhere to this number pattern (oh, and this is Schumacher's 23rd directorial effort, dum dum dum!).
There are two story lines operating seamlessly throughout the film -- there's normal family father Jim Carrey, and then there's the dark detective Jim Carrey as Fingerling in the book that he is reading, called "23". Jim Carrey aptly balances drama, thriller and comedy, weaving all dramatic components into a layered and believable performance, as he usually does. The real pleasant surprise in the film -- and indeed it's only accolade -- owes much to the bold neo-noir edge in the book "23". It's as stylized as Sin City in dark damp urban alleys, although not as compelling.
Apart from the noir storyline, "The Number 23" reeks of b-movie quality and set-ups, like a bad horror movie in which Virginia Madsen actually goes out in the middle of the night to visit an abandoned mental institution with barbed wire and no light, and proceeds to run around the dark corridors looking for clues. Wow, let me just tick off the cliché from the formula. It is unforgivably far-fetched, featuring silly canine symbols to top it all off. Most plottturns and twists are predictable, as should they be to ground the audience, but the final payoff is thankfully not easy to anticipate.
5.5/10