They could have just as well named it "number 29", or "cheese"...

Rating: 3/10 (22 December 2008)

One would make you believe that this game is about a man obsessed with a number. And sure, it's an interesting subject - can a person become so obsessed by something marginal as a simple number that he completely loses touch with reality and becomes hopelessly delusional and paranoid?
Well, perhaps someone will make a movie about that sometime. This one unfortunately doesn't have anything to do with the above, never mind what the trailers (or even the movie itself) would like you to believe. I would like to say that this number is just a MacGuffin, but it isn't even that. It's pointless. A gimmick. A hook for unsuspecting audience.
Well what IS the movie about? A dog-catcher (Carrey) who becomes obsessed with a cheesy noir crime book because he feels it somehow reflects his own life. There. Sure, the character in the book - detective Fingerling (sigh) - is (for some reason) obsessed with number 23, and Carrey himself becomes obsessed and starts seeing the number everywhere.. but it's just padding, and totally irrelevant to the story. In fact, you can cut out all the 23 references and have the main character(s) obsess about cheese or something and you'll have the exactly same story. It is painfully obvious that all the "23" stuff was written in waay after the story was already finished, rejected and sent for "rewrites".
Which would be OK.. I guess.. if the movie wasn't dull, dull, dull. Half of the movie is narrated, for chrissakes. You aren't watching the movie, you are listening to Jim Carrey narrating the movie. About a quarter-in Carrey starts reading the book, and from then until the horribly clichÃ© ending we are forced to watch "real-life" scenes from dog-catcher's life (where nothing happens) interspersed with narrated artsy film noir-ish "book" scenes which will either leave you snickering or just plain depressed. It's like a poor man's "Sin City" with all the violence cut out, narrated by Carrey and shown in slow-motion. Ugh.
This is a simple case of a C-movie script somehow being filmed with an A-movie cast.. probably because of the "number 23" hook which I guess sounded intriguing enough on paper to warrant the premium Hollywood treatment. However, since - as I said already - the movie is about number 23 as much as it is about cheese production in Switzerland, one cannot feel anything but cheated.
I give "Fingerling - the movie" 3 out of 10, because I guess it didn't insult my intelligence as much as "Forsaken" did or made me downright suicidal like "Battlefield Earth" did and the bottom of the scale must be reserved for abominations like those. But fear not, this is still a pretty lousy flick.