Dir. Joel Shumacher
Writ. Fernley Phillips
Act. Jim Carrey, Virginia MAdsen

This movie was released on February 23, I saw it on February 24, one day after the release date. 24-1=23. Oh this is going to be fun. Ok, so I am stretching a little bit, but so does this movie which starts off pretty good but kind of tales off at the end. However, it is still worth seeing at the movie theaters.

Walter Sparrow, played by Jim Carrey (Fun With Dick and Jane,) is an animal control officer who is bitten by a dog on his birthday causing him to be late in picking up his wife, Agatha, played by Virginia Madsen (Firewall,) for the party. She wanders in a book store and finds a book called The Number 23, and offers it to Walter as a gift to read. As Walter begins to read the book, the main character obsesses about the number 23 and also seems to parallel Walter's life in many ways. After reading parts of the book, Walter begins to obsess that the character in the book is him and that it has information about a murder that has not been committed yet. The clues are all based on or around the number 23.

I loved seeing Jim Carrey in this role. I believe that there is a fine line between comic genius and crazy psychotic insanity. So, what I am saying is that Jim Carrey can easily transition to both for this movie. It was fun to watch him develop his character from family man to an insane potential killer. All of the other actors were fine, but Carrey is worth the price of admission.

However, since I knew that Walter was in some way the bad guy from nearly the beginning, the script left a little to be desired. It thought the first two thirds of the movie was very entertaining and suspenseful. I also found the pacing to be very good with the switching between the movie's characters and the 'book's' characters. That was a place that could have slowed the movie down and made it choppy, but I found that was not the case. The climax to the movie was somewhat anti-climatic, just because you knew Walter was involved somehow and the ending is also the part of the movie that slows down. I also didn't like the fact that Walter had to explain everything in flashback to show the murder, the obsession, and how everything came about. I don't know what way would have been better, I just know that I would have like to see something else.

I do like this movie and I will probably own it on DVD, maybe. But considering the time of year, there are worse movies out there. By the way, I got out of the movie theater at 11:23. The sign in the movie theater lobby that had an add for the new Hummer 3 said the car got 23 miles to the gallon. And yes, the mileage on my car was 77132…32 reversed is 23. Lastly, the time I bought my food Thursday night, 19:13. 19+1+3=23…….cool.

Brian - the Naked Gun