Back to that old amnesia plot line...

Rating: 4/10 (12 November 2017)

The paranoid-obsessive behavior of a canine control officer (i.e., dog-catcher) worries his wife and son after a book his spouse has given him begins taking over his life. The tome of 'fiction' in question, self-published under a pseudonym and entitled "The Number 23", involves a detective with a kinky brunette and a suicidal blonde, the latter of whom is convinced everything that happens in life links back to the number 23. Some quick arithmetic leads our protagonist to discover the most important dates in his life directly or indirectly form 23...but soon the novel becomes a murder story. It's a case of life imitating literature but, unfortunately, not a film imitating art. Director Joel Schumacher's psychological thriller is well-produced and well-crafted without being very good. Jim Carrey, with haunted eyes and not a trace of personality, arduously underplays in the lead (with both pets and detectives figuring prominently in the narrative, his casting almost seems like an in-joke). Carrey is outshone, anyway, by Virginia Madsen at his wife, while the twists and turns of this story lead us down a depressing road, capped by a thud of an ending. *1/2 from ****