Movie Review: The Number 23 Blows Chunks

You know the screenplay that Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is writing in Adaptation, the hackneyed, high concept spec script called The Three? Well, Joel Schumacher and Jim Carrey went and made that movie. Sure, they added a dopey numerology twist and tacked "Number Twenty" onto the title, but it's the same film, complete with the idiotic "twist".

I'm sorry, am I ruining it for you? Don't worry. If you're stupid enough to waste your time and money on this turd, knowing more ahead of time will be the least of your problems.

After reading my venom above, you should know that I went in prepared to give The Number 23 a fair shake.

For the first few minutes I dared to dream that Carrey was delivering a performance that was somehow a cross between his characters in Ace Ventura and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (he plays a sad-sack dog catcher), but alas 'twas not to be.

As soon as the main plot device -- a book that details one man's descent into madness fueled by his discovery that everything is somehow related to the number 23 -- appears, Carrey switches gears and does the typical "guy going crazy with obsession" part he wasn't born to play. I would detail the intricacies of the hole-ridden plot, but frankly it's not worth wasting any more precious brain energy on it.

Suffice it to say that it's the sort of drool-inducing high concept hokum that should have been put to rest at the turn of the century.

And by that I mean 1899.

But in truth the real problem here isn't the plot. I can live without plot. The real problem is -- pay attention Hollywood execs 'cause I'm only gonna say it once -- NUMBERS AREN'T SCARY. No matter how much you try to freak me out about the number 23 being everywhere, I'm not scared. I could discover that I had a number 23 birthmark between my butt cheeks and not loose a moment's sleep. So the whole high concept was wasted on me, and I imagine it'll be wasted on anyone who doesn't wake and bake every morning before going to look for conspiracies in everything. Hell, even paranoid stoners won't find anything to chew on here, because the numerology elements are badly fumbled by the filmmakers and fail to play on that grand scale that conspiracy nut-jobs, I mean buffs, get off on.

I would like to lay the blame entirely at Schumacher's well-manicured feet, but I gotta say that just about every decision made on this thing was wrong, and he couldn't possibly be responsible for all of them. Apparently Jim Carrey fired his agent for getting him this gig, so I guess he must have had a gun to his head while reading the script and signing the contracts. Or maybe the first draft was wicked fucking awesome, but those Hollywood hotshot producers wrecked it with their meddling hands.

So in a nutshell, The Number 23 blows, hard. But in an effort to go out on a positive note, there was one thing about the movie I liked. When Carrey goes all batshit crazy, his teenage son goes along with him rather that treating him like the mental case he actually is. I liked that. It felt real. Like his son had gotten into his pot stash or something. So maybe it can be a good bonding movie for stoner dads and their stoner sons. The dumb ones, anyway.