Eventually, the lack of provision from Dick causes him to turn to desperate measures and provide for his wife Jane, played by Tea Leoni (Spanglish), and their son through escalading criminal means. As she sees their financial situation hit near rock bottom, Jane becomes Dick's partner in crime, and together go after the man who caused their problems, played by Alec Baldwin (The Cooler).

Believe it or not, the movie's greatest strength is how it captures the feeling of desperation from being unemployed and families having to sell off anything they can before losing EVERYTHING they have.

However, because of this, as we watch Dick fall into the trap so many other families deal with, I found myself unwilling to laugh through such spiraling sequences. It's not like I don't have the sense of humor, but I am simply appreciative and humble enough to be working as a professional ANYTHING. I don't own anything worth bragging about, so I have very little to lose if I were to lose my job, but for karmic reasons, I wasn't comfortable laughing at these things happening to someone else…even in a movie.

On the other hand, the film finds several REAL situations to expose how many professionals feel when hunting for an open position. For example, after four months, Dick finally lands a VP position interview. In the parking garage, he sees a handful of other suit-and-tie-guys approaching the same interview. The scene becomes this ridiculous chase to the finish line, only to find tens of others already in line for the same job. The feeling of cutthroat urgency is very real, and I loved how the movie exposed how people feel in a light-hearted manner.

Jim Carrey was of course funny and heart warming in a few scenes, but I think the fact that he was also a producer was reflected in his performance. There seemed to be a couple of unfocused moments, or maybe I'll just say he could have made a different choice in some moments.

Tea Leoni had great energy as well, and Alec Baldwin had a nice character thing going on, but I swear he didn't have an accent in his first scene, whereas the rest of the film he did. Weird. Maybe it was just me.

Overall, the picture has a lot to say, but as comedies go, I didn't think it was extremely funny as a whole.

Benn - Where's the Humanity?

The best part of this movie is big surprise, Jim Carrey. That is not to say that this is a bad movie, it is quite funny, but it is hard to laugh at this knowing that this sort of scenario happened to people after all of the corporate scandals in the late 1990's and early 2000's. It is hard to laugh at other people's misfortune when it is portrayed as real as it is in this movie.

Jim Carrey gave a very Jim Carrey performance and by that I mean he didn't take any risks, not that this was a role with many risks. His character had many opportunities for desperation but even though his actions were desperate, he didn't come off as desperate. The scene that shows my point the best is when he receives the foreclosure notice in the mail, he decides he is going to rob a store. Even though his action is that of a desperate man, at no point did he come off as being nervous, scarred, or any other of the emotions I would expect a man to have when faced with that scenario. Like I said, no since of desperation, which made the situation funny, but not completely real. Because of that the scenes that could have been funny as well as meaningful come of as funny with a hollow feeling where there should have been sustenance.

However, there are many funny scenes that make of for this hollow feeling I have for the movie. The scene where Dick is stuck behind the Mexican border and sneaks across with a bunch of immigrants is f***ing hilarious. Another scene involving Carrey and Tea Leoni where they are robbing a man and using a voice synthesizer to talk through and it's a hilarious scene of them doing everything from Star Wars to Mr. Roboto. There are many scenes that are like these two that are just hilarious and will have you laughing until you cry. For all of its issues, this is still a funny movie.

Lastly I will say that who ever made the decision at the end of the movie to thank all of the men involved with the corporate scandals with Enron, Worldcom, etc. was as funny as it was meaningful. It is a shame that this happened and because of this and the fact that this movie can really say "inspired by true events," it is somewhat of a downer and you will walk away not as happy as you should be, maybe that's the point.