Kevin Stanley, 19/12/2007
The Number 23 is Joel Schumacher's glossily-produced yet dark thriller about murder and the weirdness of numerology.
Since moving into films such as The Truman Show and The Majestic as well as the fantastic biopic of the life of Andy Kaufman - Man on the Moon, Jim Carrey has been delighting me with his straight performances, usually as an every-man character. In The Number 23 he sports a shock of floppy brown hair - a similar look to his Joel Barrish character from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - looking as harmless as a puppy.
Walter Sparrow is a dogcatcher by profession, married with a teenage son and a family man, he's an all-round nice guy. But when he gets a birthday gift from his wife (Virginia Madsen) - a novel called The Number 23, written by the oddly named Topsy Kretts (Top Secrets?) he finds just a few too many coincidences between his own life and that of the novel's main character.
There are segments of film that are sort of a film-within-a-film. They're sections of mock-film-noir and they're excellent. As Walter plays the part of the private eye searching to find a murderer. Hair slicked back and looking every bit the greasy private dick, Carrey must have relished the chance to inhabit two characters in one film.
And it really is Carrey's film, rarely is he off camera and he does a fine job. It makes you wonder why he doesn't make more films (he's only starred in about 12 films in the past ten years). Personally I'd like to see more of him, but you have to say he's chosen most of his projects very sensibly and The Number 23, whilst not being his best, is not bad.
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