Rated R for violence, disturbing images, sexuality and language.

98 Minutes

Directed By: Joel Schumacher

Written By: Fernley Phillips

Staring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Rhona Mitra, Lynn Collins, Michelle Arthur, and Mark Pelligrino

There’s no such thing as destiny. There are only different choices. Some choices are easy, some aren’t. Those are the really important ones, the ones that define us as people. -Walter Sparrow

In this thriller Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a middle-aged dog catcher who seems stuck in a boring life of suburbia. While content he longs for something more. On his thirty-second birthday Walter’s wife Agatha(Virginia Madsen) gives him a used book titled, “The Number 23″ as a gift. By the time Walter finally buckles down and begins to read the book he notices some strange similarities between the protagonist of the story and himself. As Walter reads on he finds even stranger correlations between himself and the main character, Fingerling, who is a smooth talking detective infatuated with a hot dark haired vixen named Farbriza.

Eventually, the book begins to affect his everyday life as Walter is not only obsessed with the number 23, but he is convinced that he somehow knows the author or the author knows him. His wife tries to help him work out the obsession, but eventually he is convinced that even she is out to get him as well. His paranoia between the fantasy book life correlating with his real life and the number 23 takes him down a path that can only lead to darkness.

While this sounds compelling, there were some problems. Jim Carrey has proven he has talent in the acting department (Man on the Moon), but this role is a bit of a stretch for him. He did very well as the paranoid Walter Sparrow, but his alter ego Fingerling was just awkward, and frankly uncomfortable. No amount of dark lighting, black leather, or fake tattoo’s was going to sell Carrey as Fingerling to me. I’m a big fan of Carrey’s but he just didn’t pull the smooth talking detective off, and it completely threw off the balance of the movie. It just seemed like something cut out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, rather than Sin City, and this movie was definitely not trying to be a comedy. I don’t know if part of this is to blame on the directing or not, it’s hard to say, but I think some of the responsibility laid there. Some of the fantasy shots felt amateurish and unoriginal. Weak copies of better work at best. And this left Carrey’s already weak performance naked. The saving grace of those fantasy scenes was Virginia Madsen. She was brilliant.

By the end, when his wife and his son are attempting to help him solve the mystery of 23 and the book it just begins to stretch too far into the disbelief category. At this point, he’s acting like a raging lunatic, and his family is continuing to indulge the monstrous and irrational behavior he is engaging in. I just couldn’t buy it.

The highlight of the movie was the remarkable number 23 itself. It’s true, it’s everywhere. But is this numerical coincidence a strong enough platform on which to base a movie? Apparently not. Even the endings “surprise” was not even that. I imagine most viewers had that obvious answer figured out halfway through the movie.

The first third of the movie was intriguing and compelling, but after that things just went downhill. It was an interesting idea that just didn’t fly on film and was really disappointing because it showed some promise. The Number 23 was a large disappointment.

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