Descends into absurdity

Rating: 3/10 (8 August 2007)

Despite the critical negativity surrounding its initial release, I was quite excited when I heard that The Number 23 was coming out on DVD soon; I was strangely drawn to the promises of trashy, pseudo-intellectual entertainment made by the trailer and its absurd yet curiously intriguing plot. Such promises are unfortunately unfulfilled.
Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) receives a book for his birthday. As he reads, he notices some parallels between the life of the novel's protagonist, Fingerling, and his own. Not an uncommon experience, many readers would argue. However, little details and numerical coincidences pop up more and more, and soon Walter's simple life is consumed by the novel.
Soon, the lives of Walter and Fingerling blend together, allowing for some acting flourishes from Carrey as his typically oddball character descends into one of his typically neurotic characters at a questionably fast pace. His performance is well contrasted by Virginia Madsen, who takes on the role of his wife, and for the most part, the audience, as she criticises Walter's small revelations. Having read the book, she admits "I didn't get it". The idea is that by the end, we'll come around. But we don't.
For some reason, at around the halfway point, it lunges forward as if the middle act has been left on the cutting room floor, perhaps in a bid to keep the running time at an ADD-friendly 90 minutes. Carrey is suddenly a lunatic, despite being a little over halfway through the novel at best, and 23 turns into a Scooby-Doo-ish murder mystery as the family jump in the van and track down an escaped murderer. It just falls apart and leaves you wondering what might have been.
The expository ending ties up the loose ends re-establishes some coherency on the disorder, but nevertheless, the film ends with its biggest question left unanswered: if your surname was Sparrow, why would you name your son Robin?