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Overall Rating : 5/10
Directed By : Joel Schumacher
Jim Carrey (Fun with Dick and Jane)
Virginia Madsen (The Astronaut Farmer)
Logan Lerman (Hoot)
Danny Huston (Marie Antoinette)
Supplied By : New Line Cinema
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : July. 5, 2007
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| PLOT The nightmare begins when Walter Sparrow, a mild-mannered dogcatcher, takes home a tattered used book called The Number 23. Reading it, he begins to believe that this isn’t just any story — it's his story. Inside are too many coincidences, all revolving around the number 23, for this to be chance. Rattled by the countless similarities between the degenerate main character and himself, an obsessed Walter starts to descend into madness. And when the book's main character commits an unspeakable act, Walter is terrified that he's destined to follow the same twisted path. |
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| THE REVIEW In THE NUMBER 23 Walter Sparrow is a dogcatcher, who seems to not love his job, but he makes it through the motions - but his life soon changes. The changes began when his wife Agatha buys Walter an old and worn book at a book store titled "The Number 23" At first the dogcatcher couldn't be less interested in reading the book, but it isn't long before he is completely intrigued by what he finds inside. The book follows a character by the name of Fingerling whom is a dark and mysterious detective, whom seemingly coincidentally shares a lot of similarities with Walter. The more and more Walter reads the enigmatic book the more and more he is convinced that it is definitely not just coincidence, as problems begin appearing in Walter's own life... all of them having to do with the number 23. Having recently seen and reviewed the mess of a Supernatural Thriller that is PREMONITION, I went in to THE NUMBER 23, hoping that it was at least more interesting, and above all else, made a little more sense(every movie should, but sadly, not all of them do). Here we have Jim Carrey in dual roles, we are first introduced with Carrey playing dogcatcher Walter Sparrow. It is not until Walter begins reading the book, that the story that he reads is played out on screen - so now enter Carrey as Fingerling, a detective, like you are likely to find in an old-time detective movie or something. It is these(the scenes that involved the book), that well, I found to be boring, while the story outside the book, was at times, at least thought-provoking. We are almost always accustomed to seeing Jim Carrey in his comedic roles, in which he has been awarded numerous times for them, but ever since ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, he has seemed to venture off into more serious things. His role(or roles)here is no different, and I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised to say that Carrey handled this role very well. I thought Carey along with his co-star Virginia Madsen worked very well together for the most part, to create a fairly convincing story, about a man dealing with his inner-paranoia. Besides keeping you guessing as to how it all will end, THE NUMBER 23 has it's moments, but also has some cons. As I mentioned, I didn't really enjoy the scenes from the book, that were re-enacted, and I don't know why, but I thought they were boring. Also I did mention that one of the perks of the film was the anticipation for a sure-fire colossal ending. But when it gets there, it feels like we should've known the outcome all along, and after the fact the premise of the ending isn't well explained, leaving you to do the only thing you can do, chalk up some points in the movie as being part of a movie and forgive their believability and go on. In the film's advertising itself, New Line created a buzz for their film, making the film seem like the most suspenseful film to come out in years. But unfortunately this is one of those cases in which a trailer contains just about all of a film's "hair-raising" moments, leaving maybe a few things left unseen, when you see the film itself. As I said, it has some great things in it, some great moments, but it's not the same film we saw in the trailers, that was almost guaranteed to shock us, instead it leaves us fairly confused. | ||||
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| GORE
METER 1/10 Just a few slit throats and suggestive stabbing is all I remember seeing/ |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 3/10 not that great, but did it's job, about the only thing I seem to remember is the opening title. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM Overall, the look of the film and everything is superb, and the research of numbers and the number 23 in general is abundant, but really brain-wrenching. Perhaps if half of the effort given to how many instances of 23 they could muster was given to the overall development of the story, particularly in the area of Walter's "present" occurrences, perhaps, the story would've worked out better for me...all I can say is, it wasn't as great as it had potential to be. NOTE ** I was unable to provide DVD snapshots for this review, because apparently the DVD that New Line is releasing doesn't play well with PC stand-alone DVD players( this is the first time this has ever happened, it has worked with other New Line Cinema releases however). This DVD will be available on July 24, 2007 |
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