The Number 23

Saw this over the weekend, with mixed emotions going in. The whole topic of obsession and OCD type shit is something I can relate to, but that is another story for another blog.

Anyways, brief synopsis. Guys wife buys him a book about a guy obsessed with the Number 23 and how its taking over his life. He is a detective and trying to solve the crime about a woman who is murdered. In real life, said guy thinks its like the author wrote the story about him because of the similarities to his real life. All culminating in an ending to be determined by the reader.

Jim Carrey was pretty good in this in my opinion. I had read stuff about how he was pretty laughable in the movie and can't be taken seriously, but I try to let myself go and take movies giving people a clean slate. It isnt always successful, but more often then not, it works. So like I said, I liked him in it and thought he played his role pretty good.

The story itself, is a combination of real life, and re-enactments taking place from chapters of the book. It takes on a noir style feel with Jim Carrey voicing over as he reads the chapters. Stylistically all of the flashback scenes and real time scenes are pretty nice to look at. Each scene seems to have a color scheme or some other subconscious element to put you right into the mood and it worked.

I think they did an even better job creatively putting number combinations and subtle things like that all over the movie and making it visually interested from the get go. I did however think the movie took a little too long to really get going as the first fifteen or twenty minutes seemed to be a lot longer.

Also from the start, any combination of numbers or letters or even designs in the background I found myself counting to try and find how many 23's I could find** It is impressive to me how many different scenarios the writer came up with to associate with the number. Overall, I think it was well written, and you really felt for Jim Carrey and got into the mind of somebody crippled by obsession.

It gets really good towards the end of the book, but without spoiling anything, I will just say the ending for me, left a little to be desired. In a way I guess it has the Lord of the Rings 3 problem, where it could have ended, but didn't. I think they were trying to give us something different with the ending, and move away from the formulaic "thriller" ending, but this movie might have benefitted from that, instead of turning into an almost religious type deal. Towards the end, there were some undertones about that and I dunno, maybe it is just me but it was sort of like come on.

I would recommend it and I will give it 3 buttholes, leaning more towards 3 and a half than 2 and a half. It was good and I enjoyed watching it. A friend of mine at work said she thought Jim Carrey was pretty good and didnt expect him to come off so "sexy" in his role, so I guess that means he did a pretty good job since his sex appeal image in the flashbacks worked. See it if you have some spare cash, and after the movie, if you're a dork like me, you will look for the number all over the place.

**Similar game for the Departed. I read on Joblo.com (which is THE movie fan site) about how Martin Scorcese intentionally put as many X's into the movie as he could, as it is the sign of impending danger. So if you're bored one night and have the dvd, watch and try to find as many letter X's as you can as they are all over the place.