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Genre |
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Drama, Suspense/Thriller |
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Running Time |
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95 min |
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Distributor |
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New Line |
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 Official Website |
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NEW YORK REVIEW
The Number 23 revolves around an ordinary man who finds a book called The Number 23 and begins to see that number everywhere (11:12 on the bedside clock—11+12 = 23)—which triggers fevered hallucinations of himself as a gumshoe chasing a "suicide blonde" in settings reminiscent of a fifties pulp novel, as well as nasty encounters with a half-dark, half-light mutt called Ned with a predilection for cemeteries. It's not the stupidest premise of all time. In Darren Aronofsky's brilliant Pi, a man's obsession with a mathematical constant spirals into an existential maelstrom. Jonathan Carroll churns out fast, enjoyable novels in which portentous signs (among them pooches) foreshadow the trapdoor about to open under their protagonists' so-called reality. No, The Number 23 didn't have to be as narcotizingly bad as it is. The stars had to be in perfect alignment.
The biggest star, of course, is Jim Carrey, who obviously relished the chance to fall apart on camera. The problem is that he's never together on camera. As a hyperstylized clown, he has the instincts (and the discipline) to modulate those ever-ready tics and spasms and rubber-jawed gyrations. Shackled by realism—and by the seriousness of this enterprise—he can only act more catatonic: His brain seems to be grinding emptiness. As his wife, the demure Virginia Madsen is attentive to the point of self-effacement. Scene after scene consists of her (along with the other actors) watching the star in his impotent frenzy.
Given a script, by Fernley Phillips, that feels like a film-school exercise—all structure, no stuffing—Joel Schumacher works his familiar anti-magic. Incapable, like his leading man, of establishing a baseline of realism, he delivers one overdesigned, overcostumed, overlit image after another. Shot by computer-enhanced shot, The Number 23 is impressive, but those shots don't come from anywhere or build on one another. All the connective tissue is missing; there's no there there. Are there supernatural forces at work behind the recurring 23s? Or are we watching the return of the repressed—a guilty conscience eating through the protagonist's façade of normalcy? I won't give away the ending, which manages to be both preposterous and mundane. The movie is successful in one respect: It proves that 23 is some bad-ass number, indeed. —Reviewed by David Edelstein, New York Magazine
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Release Date: 02/23/07 (Future Release)
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