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Review

Director Joel Schumacher tries his hand at the twisty psychological thriller genre to mixed results. The Number 23 pulls elements from such lackluster modern thrillers as Secret Window and Hide & Seek in order to elaborate upon a somewhat interesting gimmick involving the relevance of the number 23. From the sum of the digits in famous disasters (ex. 09-11-2001) to the number of chromosomes inherited from a parent, that pesky number seems to just pop up everywhere. It's a conspiracy theorist's playground, although the film itself admits that the lengths to which the concept is stretched are a bit much at times.

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) leads an ordinary life as an animal controller until one day he is bitten by a mysterious dog who follows him throughout the film. This incident is recounted by Sparrow in a voice over that explains how it eventually led to his receiving a book entitled "The Number 23." The book concerns a detective (also Carrey, but a mean, Colin Farrell-in-Miami Vice-looking Carrey) who becomes obsessed with the number after a curse of sorts is passed on to him. Sparrow’s home life begins mirroring that of the book, conspiracies are explored, and the inevitable big twist (or two) come and go without much involvement from the audience. The film’s conclusion is a lengthy explanation that reveals occurrences rather than clues. Clues are required to logically lead the clever audience to the mystery's solution before the big reveal, but all this long series of flashbacks does is expose the naivety of the scriptwriter who was obviously much too proud of his basic premise. The DVD will surely include at least a few alternate endings.

Carrey never seems truly comfortable in either of his roles, but he certainly does act his heart out. His saxophone playing tattooed detective is just plain goofy, but he carries it out to the best of his abilities with a menacing stare and a raspy voice. None of these high contrast, super saturated dime store novel scenes really work, but at least they make up the small percentage of the film that is blatant Schumacher.

It won't be remembered as one of the worst movies of the year (in fact it probably won't be remembered at all), but The Number 23 could easily have been a lot worse.

 -- Eric Bresler