 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
It's Walter Sparrow's (Jim Carrey) thirty-second birthday. His wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen) gives him a book called, "The Number 23" as a gift. The book is the story of a character named Fingerling (Jim Carrey); a hard-edged detective who seems to be right out of the film-noir genre. As he reads more and more, Sparrow begins to realize that Fingerling bares a striking resemblance to himself. As each character's story plays out they become more and more similar. One day Fingerling is called in to talk down a woman who is attempting to commit suicide. She tells him that she can't escape the number 23, everywhere she looks, everything she does, it's all 23. This event sparks the same obsession in Fingerling. As Fingerling slowly becomes obsessed with the number 23 so does Sparrow. As Sparrow tries to find an answer to this phenomenon, he drifts further and further into what could be either brilliance or madness. If you are a little bit confused about all this 23 business I will do my best to clarify. The 23 enigma, as it is referred to, is a real thing. The people who believe in this phenomenon see the number 23 everywhere. In words, telephone numbers, science, and anything else you can think of. Prior to this sentence, there have been 221 words, 2+21=23. The harder you look, the more connections you can find. I wanted to love "The Number 23". The first time I watched the trailer for this film I had to re-watch it another ten times because it looked so good. I was extremely excited and went into it thinking it would be awesome. I was however, unpleasantly surprised after watching the first ten minutes. In a post "The Sixth Sense" world it seems like every other film is trying to surprise us with some amazing twist ending that makes everyone gasp. This recent obsession with the twist ending had brought about several problems. In pursuing this plot twist the filmmakers miss the story worth telling. There are lots of different plots within any story. I saw several possible ways to tell this story that would have been far more interesting for a movie. Instead they chose to focus on a plot where they could throw in a twist ending, which was not very good. Jim Carrey has proven to us over the years that he is not just a comedian. He gave an incredible performance as Joel Barish in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". In "The Number 23" he sets out to show us another side of himself as an actor, and unfortunately fails. Carrey fails to make us believe that he could even be a father in this film, so it is hard to believe him as a man who is losing his grip with reality. The rest of the cast was of equal quality in their performances. It seemed as though all of the actors were simply reciting their lines as they wondered if they turned the coffee machine off. While the acting was bad, I attribute most of the problems in this movie to the script. The dialogue was weak and felt very forced. Sparrow's son is completely unrealistic and he just doesn't make sense as a character. He is more a means of moving the plot along, than an actual character. Most important in a thriller is the story. We are supposed to be gripping the edges of our seats wondering what will happen. Finally after the anticipation we have the big pay off at the end where everything comes together. "The Number 23" fails to ever really bring us into the story. All of the characters seem very unrealistic. We never really are able to relate to them or feel what they feel. While this is by no means a good movie, it isn't completely horrible. It had a lot of potential to be a good movie if it had been developed differently. There are several components of the story that are really interesting and you wish they had spent more time on those parts instead of spending the whole movie building towards a big let down. "The Number 23" is not worth a trip to the movies but it is has enough to warrant a renting, as long as nothing else is out.
Nate's Grade: C-
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