Carrey's Simply Too Old For These Kind Of Movies

Rating: 6/10 (11 January 2009)

Jim Carrey is not the man he was. He can't do the Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, or Liar Liar anymore. You can see it in his wrinkled face. He's a great actor, funny and charismatic (and the one and only good point of Batman Forever). But he can't do the same movies forever. Even Tom Hanks moved on from these kind of goofy comedies.
Carrey does not fit in with this cast. Everyone seems to be in their late 20s early 30s, and most of the actors are. Carrey looks, and is, past middle age. Yet he's trying to fit in with these people. They say he's been working at the bank for five years, but what has he been doing the rest of his forty years? The whole thing reminded me of that episode of Friends where Bruce Willis dated Rachel, but at least they they acknowledged the age discrepancy played on the idea that Willis was older. This movie keeps trying to pretend that Carrey is a thirty-something again. He's not. He's almost fifty. He should be moving on to more mature characters, something like Truman Show.
Zooey Deschanel and Carrey simply don't click. There's no on-screen connection between the two. Maybe it's because Carrey is exactly eighteen years older than her (both born on January 17 but Jim in '62 and Zooey in '80). But it's probably because director Peyton Reed doesn't have the experience for that kind of thing.
Maybe they should have gotten a younger actor for Carl. Maybe they should have gotten older actors for everyone else and made it a City Slicker-esquire mid-life crisis movie.
Carrey's age is not the only problem. It seems a bit random, like they just threw in a bunch of gags together and tied it with this "just say yes" gag. Some of the "yes" gags don't pay off. At some points it seems like they created a situation that didn't fit the story at all but would pay off some gag. It doesn't seem very thought out. The side characters are underdeveloped and rather one dimensional. There's no side stories so the movie relies entirely on the one seemingly unplanned plot line.
Not that it was a bad movie. It was funny, with plenty of laugh out loud moments. Zooey is cute in every role she plays. I've never seen Terence Stamp do anything less than a superb job. His part is short but sweet. Although Carrey should not be doing these roles, he does have fun with it. Giving it the full nine yards as he always does.
In the end it's just a poor man's Liar Liar. It has Carrey. It has a very similar plot. It has most of the gags. It just didn't have the wit. Carrey fans will probably find something to enjoy being reminded of his older, better films. But I can't really recommend it for many others.