5 for creepiness, 8 for Madsen, 5 for Carrey, 5 for movie

Rating: 5/10 (27 August 2007)

The Number 23 is a stylish thriller about a man who reads a screwy book and becomes obsessed with the titular number. Sounds intriguing, but there's simply not enough substance behind the style (perpetrated by director Joel Schumacher and cinematographer Matthew Libatique) to justify the ominousness. The movie feels like a conspiracy theory spouted off by a aged wino, although Jim Carrey, as the suddenly changed protagonist, is appropriately grim and unhinged throughout.
Carrey is Walter Sparrow, a pet-control officer (i.e., dog catcher) who begins reading a self-published, self-printed book called "The Number 23" by a pseudonymous author, Topsy Kretz, that seems to eerily mirror Walter's own life and that points to 23 as a number steeped in meaning. As Walter reads, he becomes more and more attuned to the number's presence, even creating grand stretches of truth to make it fit (such as sometimes adding the digits of numbers to get 23, and other times adding the combined numbers, anything to reach the goal). In between reading the book - which most of us would probably finish in an evening but that Walter takes many days to complete - Walter has vivid nightmares that end with his killing his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen).
The question isn't really whether Walter's insane, because clearly he's a bit not sane. The question is, as posited by the movie, whether the number 23 has any kind of particular hold over certain people. The movie doesn't address why some people who read the book don't get all bent out of shape over it, or why this particular number is more powerful than any other number. It simply tells us that the number 23 Means Something, and that Something is never a good thing.
Walter's desperate attempts at retaining his sanity and solving the mystery of the unknown author draw both Agatha and their thirteen-year-old (what, not 23?) son into the situation, which is good, because it gives Carrey something to react to other than mood lighting and creepy basements. Carrey leaves most of the shameless, doofus mugging aside for a more "serious" - scare quotes totally necessary - acting here, opting instead for a mostly constant eye-lolling hysteria and paranoia.
If the movie had wound up being a stark psychological thriller with no easy ending, it might have been serviceable, but instead it's wrapped up way too neatly for such a plot based in mysticism and conspiracies. At the end, you kind of expect someone to remove a rubber mask and say they would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for that meddling thirteen-year-old kid, his bookstore-owning milf-like mom, and his wacko dad. In short, the ending is trite and utterly predictable, a little too realistic and believable in a movie that could have used a shot of imagination adrenaline.