This movie is better than everyone says

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2007)

Recently, I came home from the video store with this one and "1408". I told my wife that the night's movie theme was horror movies based on numbers that got lousy reviews when they came out.
1408 lived up to my expectations (see my review), but this one was considerably better than I expected.
You have to admire really funny guy Jim Carrey for trying so very hard to break out of being endlessly typecast as the really funny guy.
Sometimes he is more successful than he is here, but frankly, I think he does a pretty good job of it, given what he has to work with. I suspect that this movie never would have been made without him and that he signed up because the story let him play so many different types of persons. He gets to play Walter, the nice guy, and also Walter, the tortured soul, and most fun of all, Fingerling, the weird goth/film noir detective. Sometimes, the real Jim Carrey, a really funny guy, peeks out from time to time, but on the whole he plays it straight. Trouble is, we keep seeing Jim Carrey, the really funny guy. Whoever thought it was good idea to make him an animal control officer as Walter, forgot about Ace Ventura, and well, the audience probably didn't forget. It sure occurred to me.
The animal control officer designation is necessary, I guess for the "dog" plot device that is used in the film, but I think I would have tanked the dog and used a crow or something and made Jim Carrey an accountant or some such. And anyway, how does an animal control officer get such a really amazing house? But, that's all nitpicking.
The plot line is a bizarre mishmash of ideas and is convoluted and contrived, but I thought the direction and in particular the camera work was very good. The lighting in particular, I thought excellent.
The cast is well chosen and they all do their jobs competently, but the really interesting thing is watching Jim Carrey, as always, in a Jim Carrey movie. The guy can act, no doubt about it. I find it ironic that he is so good that he can do comedy like literally no one else (which everyone will acknowledge is very difficult to do well and all the junk that comes out under the National Lampoon or Saturday Night Live Alumni brands is proof of that) but he seems to want to be a "serious" actor.
Keep trying Jim, I'll keep watching.