The Number 23

--Reviewed by Lindy Loo


Plotline: Walter Sparrow receives a book called The Number 23 on his birthday, and as he begins to read it, he finds that it parallels his own life in strange ways. He quickly becomes obsessed with figuring out whether it's about him and why everything in his life comes back to the number 23.

Scariness factor: It's more a movie about paranoia, so it's not so much a jump-in-your-seat kind of film.

Gross-Out Factor: A couple slit throats, but that's it I think...



Complaints: I actually like Jim Carrey quite a bit in serious roles (he's fantastic in Eternal Sunshine), but man alive can he not pull off being a bad-ass kind of character. The "detective" version of himself in this movie is really hard to swallow--with his large tattoos and over-done fierceness. I just don't buy it, Jim Carrey. That aside, the movie is *way* too farfetched to really suck me in as much as it could have. Don't get me wrong, I *was* intrigued and spent the whole time trying to figure out what was going on, but I found it hard to believe that anyone would HUMOR this man enough to stage a sting operation and also take him to a maximum security prison to visit a murderer. At that point, the average human being would be like "therapist-time, buddy." I also like Joel Schumaker quite a bit, but this was definitely not one of his best moments. It feels nice and creepy every once in a while, but overall, it was a bit too much.

High Points: As much as I hate twist-endings, I found this one at least interesting. Far-fetched yet again. But at least interesting. And I find the number 23 stuff to be interesting, independent of the movie (and not in a goth high-school way, I swear to god, Patrick), so THAT was at least SORT of interesting. What would've made this movie REALLY good is if Polanski had done it--I still think he is one of the great masters of paranoia (see my review on The Tenant)--Schumaker just wasn't quite so ballsy and heart-wrenching with it as he could've been. Oh, yeah--and I kinda liked the dog bit.



Overall: It's fluff, and not all that well-done of fluff--entertaining, but you won't have wasted your life if you don't even see it.

Grade: C