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| Someone's ruined star Jim Carrey's face with a black marker on this poster for Joel Schumacher's The Number 23 |
An animal control officer gets introduced to a strange book about obsession with the number 23, which is put in connection to all types of disasters all over the world, - and the family father's own life. - Is the book actually about his own life?
The Number 23 is written by Fernley Phillips (U Want Me 2 Kill Him? (2013, story contribution)) and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Joel Schumacher (The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)).
It is an absolute mega-sized turkey, which doesn't necessarily have a bad premise for a movie about obsession, but which is done in by poor execution. Jim Carrey (Batman Forever (1995)) has a tough time with this character and often falls through, probably because the script is racked with nonsense. It gets seriously dull once it seems the film has evolved into simply rattling off fatal events with the number 23 involved.
The Number 23 is mostly a film about mental illness, compulsive neurosis of some kind, but it is hard to get the protagonist's family's behavior and statements to make sense. Logan Lerman (Noah (2014)) co-stars as Carrey's twinkie son with a big headful of wonderful curls.
Another unpleasant layer to this already unpleasant star vehicle, a dead-end movie if there ever was one, is its preoccupation with suicide, which later haunted Carrey's own life, as his 2012-15 girlfriend committed suicide in 2015. The Number 23 is a sad and terrible movie, the year's worst star vehicle to be sure.
Related posts:
Joel Schumacher: Falling Down (1993) - Schumacher's arguably best film, a fiery dragon of a societal thriller
The Lost Boys (1987) - A crazy 80's teen vampire bonanza
Watch a trailer for the movie here
Cost: 30 mil. $
Box office: 77.6 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 2.58 times its cost)
[The Number 23 premiered 13 February (Los Angeles) and runs 98 minutes. Shooting took place from January 2006 - ? in California, including in Los Angeles, and in Florida. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Ghost Rider, to a 15.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#5) and grossed 35.1 mil. $ (45.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 7.7 mil. $ (9.9 %) and Italy with 4 mil. $ (5.2 %). The-Numbers.com estimate that the film made additional 28.3 mil. $ on the domestic home video market. Schumacher returned with Choose or Lose (2008, TV special) and theatrically with Blood Creek (2009). Carrey returned with a voice performance in Horton Hears a Who! (2008) and physically in Yes Man (2008). The Number 23 is rotten at 8 % with a 3.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Number 23?
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