Review of The Number 23 (2007) by Tyson P — 19 May 2013

I really wanted to enjoy this one, because I love Joel Schumacher, and Jim Carey in drama. It actually ended up being entertaining in the entirely opposite way it intended.

At first, I thought this movie was going to be about a paranoid schizophrenic with apophenia going insane while everyone else around him tries to get him hospitalized or at least obtain a therapist. What I got instead was a stab as a "mystery" "thriller" that lacks both. I actually felt that the film truly believed in its own random nonsensical connections to the number 23, as absurd as that may sound. While you might call BS on that topic, I'd have to say that all you have to do is watch the movie.

You could change the number 23 to any number and would still be able to make the same connections as long as you keep adding and subtracting and dividing, and that's exactly what this film ironically does: add, subtract, then divide itself. Not only that, but it makes fun of itself on several occasions, almost like it understands how perfectly inane and ridiculous it is. It was, as so many others say, unintentionally hilarious. Carey is a wonderful actor, but it's like he couldn't decide between his goofy caricature portrayal, or his dark, broody, gloomy Eternal Sunshine disposition, and we get a weird intermingle of both personalities that just doesn't work in this film.

The cinematography is just so abysmal at times that it's confusing. There are jump cuts and edited shots that make you double-take because you think you imagined them. The plot devices are uninspired, and uncreative, and Walter is such an unlikable sod that throughout the film, you need to resist the urge to deck him in the face, especially when he narrates The Number 23 book in an over-exaggerated, relentlessly annoying dramatic and dare-I-say "childlike" voice. Why is he reading it in that tone? To accentuate his lack of perception for the obviously lame? You can see Carey's comedy career coming to a crashing halt whenever he makes one of those unabashedly unfunny jokes he so often tells, and instead of reacting with side-splitting laughter, one can only shake their head and say "what an ass." Yes, that's after seeing, and being a big fan of Ace Venture and Dumb and Dumber. The irony is stunning.

A piece of advice to anyone who desires or strives to have a film-making career: People like to watch movies with enchanting dialogue, not listen to back story read at them via book text. If people wanted to read, they'd go read. People watch movies so they don't have to read. When half of your movie is literally a book, it kind of feels less like a movie at all... not that it's one we even enjoy watching.

I love psychological character studies, but this isn't what I was looking for. This is the complete opposite: proving that a paranoid delusional might actually be right in his psychotic beliefs. Do we really need to encourage that kind of thing? It's gotten bad enough already with people allowing everyone to share their every thought and whim on networking sites and the like, and I'm sure there have been the occasional weary, paranoid, wild-eyed individual who thinks everything has a connection and everything links to them. Truman Show syndrome, I think they call it? Wait a minute... Truman Show... Jim Carey also starred in that. I've seen The Truman Show AND this movie... and sometimes I get an eerie feeling that people are watching me, or that I'm watching my own life go by, that everyone around me is fake, that they're all actors... My birthday has surpassed its 23rd year and there are 23 people I know on Facebook who---!

Nah, just kidding. That would be stupid, and so is this movie.