The Number 23 isn't unwatchable by any means, but its particular brand of awfulness deserves a little explanation. Directed by affable hack Joel Schumacher, the movie is part of what I'd call the post-Memento film, featuring unreliable narrators, plots that twist upon each other, suitably grimy production design that screams "I must be insane because I wrote all over the walls," and the pleasures of the readerly text. Its saving grace is that it doesn't constantly tease you -- "constantly" being the operative term here -- with "Was that real, or did he just dream that?" At least the whole thing is wrapped up neatly with a bow at the end, which is the least one can demand after having to sit through this.
Tonally, the film is all wrong, too. The pulpy novel that propels Walter Sparrow into his Downward Spiral Into Madness is meant to be badly-written hardboiled dialogue -- actually, most of it is badly written period -- but Schumacher seems to take it fairly seriously. Instead we get Jim Carrey doing his best brooding Colin Farrell impersonation; it's a problem when the audience isn't sure whether to interpret this as camp. (To his credit, the writer makes Carrey's character a dog catcher; this can only be deliberate, considering one of Carrey's most famous roles, but some sequences -- particularly when Sparrow is pursued by the Hound of Heaven -- are inadvertently funny.)
In short, the best thing about the movie is Virginia Madsen's cheekbones, and they're not reason enough to watch it.
(And to Mr. Schumacher: when your oeuvre contains the infamous "Fi' cent" scene from Falling Down, it's not very cool to start with an elaborate, unfunny joke that ends with the punchline "In China, people eat dogs.")
(And to the woman at the Metreon free sneak preview who demanded to take the seats that I saved for my friends who merely got up to go to the bathroom, and who loudly pronounced, "I can do whatever I want" and tried to take my jacket off the seats anyway: you suck.)
p.s. The fact that I apparently posted this entry at 2323 hours is a total coincidence. (I'm writing this section much later, at 1:15 am.)
Posted by the wily filipino at February 20, 2007 11:23 PM