The Number 23

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jim Carrey as a schizophrenic murderer isn't convincing, in this melodramatic film about a man obsessed by the Number 23. Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever, St. Elmo's Fire) has unintentionally managed to make a comedy of horrors that really is quite humorous in parts. Walter Sparrow (Carrey) becomes engrossed in a homespun novel about Detective Fingerling, whose life degrades into mayhem because of his obsession with 23's esoteric numerical puzzles. Sparrow's preoccupation with the book follows his botched attempt to catch a nasty dog that bites him, leading one to believe that Sparrow's contraction of rabies might be the cause for his mental degradation. As the story progresses, Sparrow retreats further into Fingerling's world, rife with suicidal sexpots and hardboiled detective sleuthing. His wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), also plays Fingerling's girlfriend, sex-crazed Fabrizia, who taunts Fingerling until he stabs her. Back in reality, Walter aims to solve the unresolved crimes in the book, taking it as a murderer's diary rather than as an imagined work. The story is half-baked, though Carrey's portrayal of a mentally disturbed person is what makes The Number 23 comedic. Long, contemplative stares, and over-dramatized acting renders Sparrow a clichéd character, rather than one odd enough to engage viewers. For a better version of almost the exact plot but with a terrorist's twist, see Thr3e instead. --Trinie Dalton

Fun with Dick and Jane

Amazon.co.uk Review
Remakes are always a gamble, so it's a pleasant surprise that Fun with Dick and Jane pays off with unexpected dividends. It's as entertaining as the 1977 original starring George Segal and Jane Fonda, and the teaming of Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni makes this a safe bet for comedy fans, in spite of a slapstick screenplay that fails to achieve its fullest potential. Rather than attempt a darkly comedic send-up of the Enron scandal that left thousands of stockholders in financial ruin, director Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) opts for a lighter, more accessible (read: commercial) satire of corporate greed and cynicism, beginning in the year 2000 when Dick (Carrey) gets a plum promotion as a mega-corporate communications director just as his boss (Alec Baldwin) is preparing to bail out before stock prices plummet. Dick's wife Jane (Leoni) has quit her job as a travel agent, so the corporate bombshell leaves them penniless and desperate, resorting to petty thievery and, eventually, plotting high-stakes revenge against the greedy executives who ruined their lives. As a send-up of financial distress in a ravaged post-Enron economy, Fun with Dick and Jane delivers laughs with just enough pointed humor to give it a strong satirical edge, and Carrey's reliable brand of zaniness is controlled enough to balance nicely with Leoni's more subtle (and woefully underrated) skills as a screen comedienne. And while the "special thanks" end-credits hint at the sharper, more biting satire this might have been, there’s enough fun with Dick and Jane to make this recycled comedy worth a look. --Jeff Shannon

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you spliced Charles Addams, Dr. Seuss, Charles Dickens, Edward Gorey, and Roald Dahl into a Tim Burtonesque landscape, you'd surely come up with something like Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Many critics (in mostly mixed reviews) wondered why Burton didn't direct this comically morbid adaptation of the first three books in the popular series by Daniel Handler (a.k.a. "Lemony Snicket," played here by Jude Law and seen only in silhouette) instead of TV and Casper veteran Brad Silberling, but there's still plenty to recommend the playfully bleak scenario, in which three resourceful orphans thwart their wicked, maliciously greedy relative Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), who subjects them to... well, a series of unfortunate events. Along the way they encounter a herpetologist uncle (Billy Connolly), an anxious aunt (Meryl Streep) who's afraid of everything, and a variety of fantastical hazards and mysterious clues, some of which remain unresolved. Given endless wonders of art direction, costume design, and cinematography, Silberling's direction is surprisingly uninspired (in other words, the books are better), but when you add a throwaway cameo by Dustin Hoffman, Law's amusing narration, and Carrey's over-the-top antics, the first Lemony movie suggests a promising franchise in the making. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Amazon.co.uk Review
Screenwriters rarely develop a distinctive voice that can be recognized from movie to movie, but the ornate imagination of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) has made him a unique and much-needed cinematic presence. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a guy decides to have the memories of his ex-girlfriend erased after she's had him erased from her own memory--but midway through the procedure, he changes his mind and struggles to hang on to their experiences together. In other hands, the premise of memory-erasing would become a trashy science-fiction thriller; Kaufman, along with director Michel Gondry, spins this idea into a funny, sad, structurally complex, and simply enthralling love story that juggles morality, identity, and heartbreak with confident skill. The entire cast--Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, and more--give superb performances, carefully pitched so that cleverness never trumps feeling. A great movie. --Bret Fetzer

DVD Description
Bruce Almighty

Despite his popularity and the love of his girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston - Rock Star, The Good Girl), local TV reporter Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey - The Grinch, Liar, Liar) doesn’t think the world is treating him fairly. Then, after his worst day ever, Bruce angrily rants against God for ruining his life and mismanaging the universe. So God (Morgan Freeman - The Sum Of All Fears, Deep Impact) responds … and endows Bruce with all of His powers to see if Bruce can do a better job. From the hit-making director of Liar, Liar and the writer who brought you The Nutty Professor … all hilarity breaks loose when a little divine intervention lets the always unpredictable Jim Carrey spend a week playing God!

The Majestic

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like Frank Darabont's other movies, The Majestic attempts, and sometimes achieves, the sheer decency of classic American movies. A cross between The Music Man and The Return of Martin Guerre, it is the film about McCarthyism that Frank Capra might have made if he had not drifted to the populist Right. An amnesiac screen-writer (Jim Carrey) is mistaken for a missing war-hero and becomes the force that reinvigorates a town distraught over its dead young men. The film is so caught up in a pastel-coloured elegiac celebration of small-town life that it at times loses pace altogether and not even Jim Carrey can quite pull it back up to its natural speed. On the other hand, his underplaying of the climactic confrontation with the House Un-American Affairs Committee--his career is at risk because he once followed a girlfriend to a political meeting--is admirable; we believe in his conversion from cynicism to heroism because he is even quieter than Jimmy Stewart in Mister Smith Goes to Washington mode. Martin Landau is a little too lovable as the grieving father who persuades Carrey of his identity, Laurie Holden not quite convincing as the woman for whom he falls.

On the DVD: The Majestic on disc is presented in 1.85:1 visual aspect ratio with crisp, clear visuals that sometimes make us gasp at the complex realism of the period details and has an attractive Dolby 5.1 stereo acoustic. Extras include some deleted scenes, the trailer and an extended sequence from Sand Pirates of the Sahara, the witty B-movie pastiche that crops up at a couple of important moments in the plot. --Roz Kaveney

The Grinch

The Grinch, a foul-tempered green and hairy creature, who lives on Mount Crumpit, hates Christmas almost as much as the residents of Whoville, the town at the bottom of his mountain. One night he decides to steal Christmas away from the Whos by taking all their decorations, presents and Christmassy things. Also features 'Step By Step, Inch By Inch, The Making Of The Grinch'

Me, Myself and Irene

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Me, Myself & Irene, Jim Carrey plays Charlie Baileygates, a cop for the finest police force in the world (Rhode Island's). In denial about his wife's affair, he's a nice guy who goes around trying to do the right thing but is taken advantage of every step of the way. Instead of confronting people, he takes the abuse, balls it up and hides it in the pit of his stomach. His psyche can only take so much, though and soon his alter-ego Hank pops out to do every libidinous thing Charlie would never do. It's a great premise for a Jim Carrey film. Unfortunately, it's not a great Jim Carrey film. Famous for the lowbrow, shock comedies like Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There's Something About Mary, here the Farrelly brothers get lost in a series of lazy gags and an even lazier plot about some evil golf development and the woman, Irene (Renée Zellweger), who needs to be protected because she knows something about it. Some of the jokes hit (there's a bathroom scene that's 10 times funnier than the hair-gel gag in There's Something About Mary), but many more miss. There are some great concepts (his three sons are hip-hop geniuses) that don't go anywhere (they swear a lot). It's like the movie itself has a split personality--funny ideas trapped in a less-than-funny film. --Andy Spletzer, Amazon.com

Simon Birch

Simon is the smallest kid in town but has always known that he was born to do something big while, at the same time, his best friend Joe is searching for the identity of his father. Together these two share the ups and downs that will forever bind them together.

The Truman Show

Amazon.co.uk Review
The whole world is watching--literally--every time Truman Burbank makes the slightest move. Unbeknownst to him, in this hauntingly funny film by Peter Weir, his entire life has been an unending soap opera for consumption by the rest of the world. And everyone he knows--including his mother, his wife, and his best friend--is really an actor, paid to be part of his life. In this intriguing and surprisingly touching 1998 film, writer Andrew Niccol (screenwriter for Gattaca) imagines an ultimate kind of celebrity, then sees it brought to life with comic intensity and emotional honesty by Jim Carrey in what may be the performance of his career. Carrey has exceptional support from Laura Linney and Ed Harris, but it's his show, in a portrayal that demonstrates just what kind of range Carrey is capable of. -- Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

Liar, Liar

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jim Carrey is back in top form after his disastrous outing in The Cable Guy. As a lawyer who becomes physically unable to tell a lie for 24 hours after his son makes a magical birthday wish, Carrey learns a few brutal truths about the real meaning of life. There is very little plot, but Carrey's rubbery contortions and slapstick trickery provide just enough humour to keep you interested in this breezy bit of escapism. Not aided in Liar Liar by pets or animation, Carrey manages to do amazing and unique things with very simple props. He is also more in control of his acting than before. He is still over the top, but remains believable in some of the lower-energy scenes. An added plus is that the comedy is not as coarse as we've come to expect from him. --Rochelle O'Gorman

The Cable Guy

When a young urbanite calls to order cable TV for his apartment he gets much more than he bargained for, as the demented title character arrives and proceeds to insinuate his way into the beleaguered customer's life. Raised by television as a child and starved for human contact, the "cable guy" is a darkly hilarious carnation of the modern age. Carey's manic karaoke rendition of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" is a twisted highlight.

Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls

Amazon.co.uk Review
This inevitable sequel finds Jim Carrey reprising his role as the world's greatest pet detective. His latest case, the disappearance of a rare African white bat, draws him out of his spiritual retreat at a Tibetan monastery following the tragic outcome of his previous case. That traumatic experience, which makes for a hilarious opening-scene send-up of the Stallone thriller Cliffhanger, prompts Ace to venture to Africa, where he goes native with the tribe that hired him to find their symbolic bat. From that point anything goes, with Carrey pushing the boundaries of good taste (what, you were expecting good taste?) up to and including his now-infamous "birth" scene from the backside of a mechanical rhinoceros. Lighten up, and don't be ashamed if you find yourself laughing. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Batman Forever

Amazon.co.uk Review
When Tim Burton and Michael Keaton announced that they'd had enough of the Batman franchise, director JoelSchumacher stepped in (with Burton as coproducer) to make this action-packed extravaganza starring Val Kilmer as the capedcrusader. Batman is up against two of Gotham City's most colourful criminals, the Riddler (a role tailor-made for funnyman Jim Carrey) and the diabolical Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), who join forces to conquer Gotham's population with a brain-draining device. Nicole Kidman plays the seductive psychologist who wants to know what makes Batman tick. Boasting a redesigned Batmobile and plenty of new Bat hardware, Batman Forever also introduces Robin the Boy Wonder (Chris O'Donnell) whose close alliance with Batman led more than afew critics to ponder the series' homoerotic subtext. No matter how you interpret it, Schumacher's take on the Batman legacy is simultaneously amusing, lavishly epic and prone to chronic sensory overload. --Jeff Shannon

Dumb And Dumber

Amazon.co.uk Review
Delivering exactly what its title promises, this celebration of stupidity was Jim Carrey's 1994 follow-up to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Mask. The film pairs the rubber-faced wacky man with Jeff Daniels as the not-so-dynamic duo of Lloyd and Harry, dunderheads who come into the possession of a briefcase containing ransom money that is intended for Mob-connected kidnappers. Lauren Holly co-stars as the woman who lost the briefcase, and with whom Carrey falls in love (both in real life and as his moronic on-screen character). As Lloyd and Harry make a mad dash to return the briefcase (never aware of its contents), the bumbling buddies attract Mobsters, cops, and trouble galore. This lowbrow laugh-a-thon scores some solid hits for hilarity, but with gags involving ill-fated parakeets, buxom bimbos, and an overdose of laxatives, be prepared to put your brain--and good taste--on hold.--Jeff Shannon

The Mask

Amazon.co.uk Review
Praised at the time for Jim Carrey's facial acrobatics as the titular hero, The Mask also had real charm in its use of period-ambiguous settings and intelligent use of its heroine, Cameron Diaz in her first screen role. Carrey is as interesting when he's the put-upon Stanley Ipkiss as he is when he transforms into an amoral cartoon character (thanks to chance discovery of an ancient mask). When a sweet woman reporter tells him that he is the nicest man in town, it does not strike us as odd. The plot is a pretty standard one--the hero comes to realise that he can do everything for himself and does not need magical assistance--but outstanding performances by Peter Green as the gangster heavy and Peter Riegret as the irascible cop who has to make sense of things offers the film a bit more dramatic oomph. Add to this a couple of splendid song-and-dance routines and one of the most charming dogs in modern movies, and you have something moderately special.

Ace Ventura - Pet Detective

Amazon.co.uk Review
The 1994 box-office hit that turned comedy maniac Jim Carrey into Hollywood's first $20-million man, this gag-filled no-brainer stars Carrey as the titular rubber-faced gumshoe who tracks down lost pets for his heartbroken clients. Ace's latest case involves the apparent kidnapping of the Miami Dolphins' team mascot, Snowflake the dolphin. His investigation is a source of constant aggravation for Miami police lieutenant Lois Einhorn (Sean Young), who turns out to be packing more than a pistol under her skirt. Friends fans will appreciate the presence of Courtney Cox, who remains admirably straight-faced as the Dolphins' publicist and Ace's would-be girlfriend, but of course it's Carrey who steals the show with shameless abandon. One viewing may suffice for a lot of people, but Carrey's hyper antics made Ace Ventura: Pet Detective one of the bestselling videos of the 1990s. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Peggy Sue Got Married

Amazon.co.uk Review
Francis Ford Coppola's passable 1986 comedy stars Kathleen Turner as an unhappy, middle-aged woman who goes back in time to her high school years and meets her future husband (Nicolas Cage) all over again. A lightweight entry from Coppola, the film has some clever, backward-looking jokes; and the lead actress does bring intelligence and searching emotions to her role. Cage (Coppola's nephew)--who specialised in these dumb-guy roles back then (see Raising Arizona)--is in sharp, raw form. Worth a visit, but don't expect to be bowled over this time by the legendary director.--Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Earth Girls Are Easy

Valerie's life takes on a whole new meaning when three aliens crash into her pool. Her problem lies in whether to stay on Earth or not

The Dead Pool

Amazon.co.uk Review
After the drudgery of Sudden Impact, the third and worst sequel to Dirty Harry, no one could have expected the fourth to have any signs of life. But The Dead Pool is fairly inspired, even playful--check out a "chase" scene between Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan character and a remote-controlled toy car wielding a bomb--and it ended the long-running series on an unexpectedly positive note. This time, Callahan investigates a series of murders that appears to be on a "death list," while becoming romantically involved with a television reporter (Patricia Clarkson). Jim Carrey has a small but memorable part as a doped-up rock star, and Liam Neeson is on board, too. IT is directed by Eastwood-surrogate Buddy Van Horn (Any Which Way You Can). --Tom Keogh

Doing Time on Maple Drive

All In Good Taste

A man with a screenplay to sell sets out to find a backer. Unfortunately all those he approaches with money and influence insist that the screenplay be 'sexed up' and made more violent

Once Bitten

A very young Jim Carrey puts on a great performance in this fun horror spoof. I don't wanna spoil it for fans who may not have seen it yet, but if you like Jim Carrey, you'll love this film...buy it!!

Rubberface

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