nothing special

Rating: 5/10 (22 March 2007)

In yet another attempt to break away from the manic comic persona that has become his stock-in-trade, Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, an animal control expert whose life is literally taken over by a strange novel he is reading entitled "The Number 23." In it, the protagonist - whose life story, Walter believes, greatly parallels his own - becomes convinced that the number 23 exudes a kind of mystical power over the fates and lives of certain, specially chosen people. Soon Walter is seeing 23s all over the place and slipping further and further into paranoia and madness just like the character in the book.
"The Number 23" is a gimmicky, insubstantial thriller that is facilely consumed then instantly forgotten. The movie keeps cutting back and forth between Walter's life in the real world and re-enactments of events in the novel, which are basically silly film noir knockoffs done in murky, over-stylized settings. Though there are a few fleeting moments of quality in the wrapping-up stage of the drama - where the filmmakers actually seem to be pulling the story elements together in a semi-coherent fashion - there's little to engage our interest in most of the rest of the movie.
Carrey, Virginia Madsen as his wife, and Danny Huston as a professor friend of the couple, aren't given much to work with in terms of character development. Everyone simply seems to be going through the motions, marking time till a more substantive movie heads their way. Here's hoping such a project won't be too long a time in coming.