The Number 23 (2007)

It's funny when a favourite actor stars in a bad film. Sometimes it's an issue of the film being bad and not the actor's performances and in many cases this can lift the film higher than it deserves. Sadly, i can't say that for The Number 23.

The Number 23 is the story of Walter Sparrow who becomes obsessed with a novel that he believes was written about him. As his obsession increases, more and more similarities seem to arise. He becomes obssesed with connections between the number 23 and his life and decends into insanity while at the same time we see it from the view of his alter-ego in the story, "Fingerling".

The idea may seem an interesting one at a glance, hell i'm all up for a good thriller, shame this wasn't. The main reason is that the whole "23" thing was done to death, i mean any little connection to "23" it could make, it made. It went past ridiculous and entered into down right stupidity. Now back to my original point. I'd heard bad things about this movie before seeing it but had high hopes Carrey (one of my all time favourite actors) could help this film, sadly not even he could lift it above average. In fact his performance was an interesting one. He really throw himself into it but at the same time, you get the feeling that the people involved know this is madness and are hoping that it will do well by going in full force.

I did like apsects of the visual (gothic) style. i liked some parts of the film noir style, and the scenes involving fingerling. However, some of the twists taken in this film aren't good and really push the bounderies of believability. For instance, the story itself takes so many turns, from who wrote the book, a story involving a character in jail also mixes in with both the real time and fingerling story, which comes off as over the top and just too many twists. Not to mention a dog that is haunting carrey's character

All in all, i have to credit the enthusiasm of all involved. However enthusiasm could not save a film with a flimbsy story and too many plot twists. In fact the main flaw of this film is it tries to hard. There was a nice visual style there and a good idea, sadly done to death.