The Number 23 has a great concept. Let’s call that concept the wheels of the movie car. It has what looks to be a good cast. Let’s call those the passengers. It has a shoddy story. Let’s call that the Fiero body. To complete the analogy: watch the Fiero crash into a mountain and catch on fire. In the wreckage all the passengers die and the tires melt down into a rubbery liquid.
The concept is Jim Carrey with OCD. There’s more than that of course, twists and turns and bloody opening credits, but really it’s all about being obsessed with The Number 23. The fixation starts when Carrey starts reading a book (message: don’t read) entitled “The Number 23.” You didn’t see that coming did you? It’s a blood red book and even though it’s about 60 pages Jim Carrey pores over it for days. He’s not looking for new clues either, nope, on day three he’s still about 45 pages in. Clearly Walter Sparrow (that’s Jim Carrey’s movie name) can add some type of learning disability into the mix to go along with that OCD. Would it have been so hard to make the book bigger guys? It would have cost you nothing in authenticity and it would have made Jim Carrey seem like he could actually read. Whatever, I know this is a minor detail so I’ll move on.
Things start becoming sinister, which isn’t a big shock if you’ve seen any of the trailers. Then they spiral out of control! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Carrey and his wife (Virginia Madsen) do their best Keystone Kops impression as they hunt down all the mysteries the little red book presents. I will give one quick shout-out to Logan Lerman as the son; he’s the only character in the tale who doesn’t come off as completely insane and unrealistic.
The film also doesn’t do well with the execution of the number mania as a whole. Anything is manipulated to reach the number 23, or crazily enough the number 32 (because that’s 23 backwards). Part of the theme is accepting this is crazy but it’s disappointing that it doesn’t come off as spooky in the slightest. It’s very difficult to even say “Wow, what a coincidence!” It’s more inevitable than anything else and as you notice all the 23s the filmmakers have sprinkled throughout the film it comes off as a little pathetic.
The climax of The Number 23 is only interesting in that it hints at what might have been. As I said before, the premise could really work if it was given a real script to work worth. In its current form it ranks as a skip, completely unworthy of your own personal obsession.
