The Number 23
Reviewed by David on February 25, 2007
Dog-catcher Walter Sparrow's life takes a turn for the mathematical after he receives a strange novel for his birthday. The book mirrors his past in uncanny ways and leads Sparrow (Jim Carrey) to the increasingly paranoid belief that a number is stalking him, monitoring his every move. Upon realizing that the blood-thirsty integer is everywhere, he naturally concludes that it's out to get him, just like it got its past victims. That's right. The number has victims.
Subtlety is really the only way to pull off a movie like this. Incidentally, subtlety is a quality that director Joel Schumacher has never possessed. After an admittedly cool title sequence, Schumacher immediately proceeds to thrill us with a panning crane shot that even a first-year film school student would be ashamed of. But what should we really expect from the delicate hands that wrought Batman and Robin? He sets the directorial bar typically low, starting with an over-the-top premise and a generic score, and then turns the actors loose in an uphill battle against the script. Attempts to bolt on film noir flashback sequences only confuse the issue. It takes a director of Schumacher's caliber to make film noir an even more obvious and revolting choice than it initially appears.
While The Number 23 does maintain a certain interest level for the duration, in the end, it's really only a sad waste of a clever plot. Rather than making the number in question a vital-but-mostly-implicit component of the story, it's mentioned gratuitously in nearly every scene. There's even an absurd counting session, involving Sparrow's entire demented family, in which they add up their street address in various ways to yield 23, and yes, sometimes even 32!
For his part, Carrey seems recently determined to define his career not with goofy shenanigans, but with Very Serious roles devoid of humor (third-grade level math scenes not withstanding). To a degree, that's commendable, but why choose this, a script in the vein of Secret Window and Hide and Seek, which promises clever plot twists, but ends with a tired, hackneyed explanation at the eleventh hour? It's not that Carrey or the rest of the cast do a poor job. They actually do quite well with what they've been given. Unfortunately, Schumacher + film noir + dog-catcher = 23. Oh, wait. I meant laughable.
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