The Good

Carrey is good actor and he proved it in "Man on the Moon" and in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". But hey, what can an actor do without good story and proper directing. He can do "Number 23".

The Bad 

Joel Schumacher is poor, overrated director and he proved it in almost every movie he made. What he did with Batman is just disaster, but probably Batman movies supposed to look good. Well, they didn't. Instead of Gothic and macabre we got Disneyland. Sure "Falling Down" was great but can You ruin the film with Robert Duvall and Michael Douglas AND with excellent script? No You can't. 

And so good actor and poor director finally met and made "Number 23"...

The Ugly (23)

I know that it's stupid to begin with but... Fingerling's subplot (almost half of this movie) looks exactly like intro to another chapter of Max Payne2. VoiceOvers, quality of detective story itself, quality of the characters, even colors, mood and music, editing, and sound mix too! Perhaps it works for the game, but surely it doesn't in the cinema.

Mise en scene is so bad that it becomes funny. It's not even annoying. Carrey reads walking down the stairs in park? Why? Is it natural? No, but it looks good. Why Suicide Blond covered walls in her apartment with white paper? If she just wanted to kill herself? There is no logic in that, but still it looks good. Guess what it, it doesn't look good at all. It looks unnatural instead. 

All female characters are Flat. Why is that so? Who cares, let's go on with the story.

Who is this Fingerling? Private eye on the suicide? Hardly believable.

Scenes when Walter Sparrow is arguing with his wife about weather book is really about him could be the best part of this movie. Instead we get Moulder/Scully routine. Disappointment. 

Interiors has no sign of people living in them, except the significant objects (shoes, photos etc.) Hard luck.

Dialogs ain't that bad. But what about V.O.? Well that's another story. "There's no such thing as destiny. There are only different choices". Captain obvious to the rescue! "Number was coming after Fingerling. And now it was coming after me". Cliché. And so on.

It's obvious that average housewife would break into public building in the middle of the night. Successfully and undisturbed.

The subplot of the dog dragging main character to the graveyard. This is so old trick and so comfortable for writer, and that it should have been banned. I mean it!

Flashbacks and editing similar to "what happened in last episode of X-files" isn't the best way to present the most interesting part of the movie. Is it?

I wish I could say that this story deserves a better fate, but it doesn't. It makes no sense. Told in chronological order is weak and unbelievable. All the time we have undeveloped characters trapped is chain of situations which are nothing but badly written fiction. This could be fun, but - since whole movie is dead serious - it isn't. To many coincidences is just bad for every story. And the "mystery"? It's predictable and easy to guess. 

Losing touch with reality is great theme for good movie, but I never saw any of that in Hollywood's productions. If You're interested in the subject just watch "Repulsion" by Polanski or something by David Cronenberg, "Spider" or "A History Of Violence" both of that movies deals with similar problems that "Number 23" wanted to show. Wanted, but failed.

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negative