If Your Toilet Could Write...

Rating: 1/10 (1 March 2008)

If your toilet could write, it would write better scripts than this. Ned, the Dog, Guardian of the Dead, protected and produced stuff that's less stinky than this. If only there were negative numbers to rate with.
A pretentiously "deep" film where Jim Carrey pretends to be real actor, and both fail miserably. A mysteriously psychic book that "Is just like my life" and supposedly like everyone else's (with murders, suicides, strange sex...Oh yeah, we all have those lives, don't we?) leads our "hero" into a convoluted trail of trying to free himself of obsession...no, finding a murderer...no solving a mystery...no getting a very large paycheck for a very lousy job.
It is painfully obvious that the writer thought he was writing something wonderfully deep, and painfully obvious that Carrey thought he was finding something to express his hidden serious side and make his dramatic acting "bones", but the result is just...well, painful.
I actually sat through the entire thing (though I must admit I TIVO'd it and could only take small doses at a time to avoid nausea, not from the violence but from the lousy "plot", such as it was) because I thought it would have a wonderful plot twist to somehow bring it all together like "12 Monkeys", one of my favorite films. That film is what this film dreams of being, a writing masterpiece where many pieces of a puzzle are mysteriously brought together and you gasp and say "Ah Ha!" at the same time. But the only resemblance between this and 12 Monkeys is that they both have numbers in the title and this is more like something monkeys...well, never mind. There is no such hope. This film which actually has humor in the beginning and makes you think it's going to be a comedy can never make up its mind what kind of movie it is. And you will wonder why you ever thought it was one.
Avoid it. In fact, scold anyone you know who admits seeing it. The single clever piece in the entire film is the last second, after the live action when you get a quote from Scripture that may have given the author the idea for the thing. But that's as close to inspired as anything ever comes in this thing. And expired would be a more appropriate word.