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Review #411 of 365
Spoiler Movie Review of The Number 23 (2007) [R] 95 minutes
WIP™ Scale: (1st viewing $13.50 + 2nd viewing $13.50) / 2 = $13.50
Where Viewed: Colorado Cinemas Cherry Creek 8, Denver, CO
When 2nd Seen: 28 February 2007
Time: 10:15 p.m.
Film's Official Website • Film's Trailer
DVD Release Date: unscheduled
Directed by: Joel Schumacher (The Phantom of the Opera)
Written by: Fernley Phillips
Featured Cast (Where You Might Remember Him/Her From):
Jim Carrey (Fun with Dick and Jane) • Virginia Madsen (A Prairie Home Companion) • Logan Lerman (Hoot)
Soundtrack: Download now from 
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Click for 'Review Lite' [a 150-word or less review of this film]
Warning: What follows is a SPOILER review for The Number 23. If you do not wish to have the 'big twist' revealed, please read the non-spoiler review by clicking here.
Since I first saw The Number 23, the film has haunted me a bit. I am one of the lucky ones. I have no 3s at all in my numbers. Not my SSN, not my DL, not even my passport. I do have a 3 in my license plate, but not a single 2. Nonetheless, what has stuck with me is the riveting portrayal and brilliant performance by Jim Carrey. As I have written previously, I've never been his biggest fan. He's always struck me as an amazingly talented actor who took dumb/silly roles because he can really play silly/dumb characters. Then, along came a little film called, The Truman Show, and I began to soften. While I still wish the big twist in that film hadn't been revealed until the end, this was a bit different. This was a role that finally warranted his talents. Of course, I'm certain after seeing his résumé unfold after that he's not really hit another role that taxed him, that forced him to out of his comfort zone and into the complete recesses of a person's subconscious mind until now, his dual characters of Walter Sparrow and Fingerling. As this is the spoiler review, and again, if you don't want spoilage, don't read further, I can at last get to the heart of this point and fully examine it. So, here it is. In the film, of course, Jim Carrey plays the innocent dog catcher, Walter, who has a run in with an nasty evil dog named Ned, and he attributes in voice over this run-in to an unraveling of his life over the course of the next few weeks. That run-in which resulted in a nasty bite to the forearm, gave his beautiful wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen) just enough time to slip in to the bookstore and notice sitting prominently on the shelf with its gleaming, blood red cover, the book that starts it all, The Number 23. When Walter arrives to pick her up, he spots her in the store just down the street from her upscale cake decorating shop, and here she presents him with the book as a birthday present.
Agatha gives Walter the book that will change his life forever, The Number 23(Click Still Photo to Purchase)
As he takes to reading the book, and she reads it too, though faster, and faster because her mind does not take her where his mind takes him, he envisions the book in his mind with himself in the role of the main character, Fingerling. After reading a bit, he curiously discovers an uncanny resemblance between his own childhood and that of Fingerling, including that he too had been read the book, Fingerling at the Zoo. By the way, this is an actual book by Dick Laan though it's been out of print for a very, very long time, something tells me it will be back in print soon enough. As he points out these coincidences between the book and his childhood, his wife poo-poos then telling him that he is nothing like Fingerling. "Fingerling", she tells him, "is a murderer, are you a murderer?" As Walter reads on, the story within comes to life in his own mind, and here is the beginning of where Jim Carrey's talent must take hold, for as he imagines the life of the adult detective Fingerling, he portrays the character in shades of black and white with surreal, chaotic motion. Virginia Madsen too, must carry the dual roles as the dutiful wife, Agatha and the sex-crazed Fabrizia.
Jim Carrey as Fingerling and Virginia Madsen as Fabrizia(Click Still Photo to Purchase)
Along the way, however, Detective Fingerling runs into The Suicide Blonde (Lynn Collins who also plays Mrs. Dobkins—the woman whom young Fingerling finds dead in the house across the way and incites his passion to become a detective rather than an accountant as his father had planned—as well as Young Fingerling’s Mother) who plans to hang herself to escape the curse of The Number 23. Passed down to her from her father, the number now haunts her appearing everywhere she turns and causing her endless grief and suffering. Suicide would seem to be the only way out. Detective Fingerling is called in my neighbors who see her through the window with the noose around her neck, and his expertise happens to be in talking down jumpers. Their conversation, however, has too powerfully awful outcomes. First, the curse of the number 23 is passed on to his subconscious mind and second, after feeling he's done a great job, she still jumps to her death and lands a few feet from his path back on the ground. Interweaving the real story of Walter Sparrow and the soon to prove non-fictional work of The Number 23 author Topsy Kretts, proves a mind-bending experience for many who leave the theatre still wondering exactly what happened. In fact, it took two viewings on my part to really get the full gist of the twist.
"…Walter Sparrow is a literary character masterpiece that took an incredible talent to bring to life…a defining moment in the career for a man who yes, sadly, portrayed Lloyd Christmas…"
Walter Sparrow is the true author of The Number 23. The resemblance between the lives of the two men is not a coincidence after all. The balancing forces of nature have come to life in the form of Ned the dog in order to force Walter back into reconciliation with the terrible murder he committed of his college girlfriend Laura Tollins whom he believed to be having an affair with professor. The Number 23, however was motivating him all the way. After he killed her, he hid the body, under the 23rd step in a park not far from the cemetery where a marker would be placed for her in the absence of a body. The professor, however, was found guilty of the murder having her blood all over his hands and the murder weapon that Walter had left behind. After the killing, the number took complete hold of him. He fled to room 23 in a shady downtown hotel to write his confession at the hands of the number. Barreling down the path toward utter insanity, he filled the walls with every imaginable combination of things that ever had to do with the number 23. He typed out his book, page by page, changing the names and some of the events to protect the innocent just as any good detective crime novelist would do. But, chapter 23 of the book, he wrote up on the walls itself, and they did not make it into the book. Then he did what he thought was best, he jumped off the building theoretically to his death below. Only, he didn't die. Instead, he was found, patched up, rehabilitated, and set out to live again. His resurrection was accompanied by a nearly complete amnesia of his former life. He had no recollection of his affliction by the number or his murder, nor knowledge that an innocent man had gone to prison in his stead. In going through his footlocker of things, however, his manuscript was found and then transferred to one of the doctors in charge of his rehabilitation. The doctor read the book, and decided it was the ravings of a lunatic. He did, however, seize the opportunity to publish it under the assumed name of Topsy Kretts, and worse, his reading of the book buried him within the curse of the number as well. After Robin, Agatha's and Walter's son finds a mysterious P.O. box in the back of the book, the trio decide to get in touch with the author as Walter has pieced together enough to now believed the book is real and that the author is the murderer of Laura Tollins.
Jim Carrey is Fingerling AND Walter Sparrow(Click Still Photo to Purchase)
At the time, Agatha has no idea what she's going to find, but soon enough, Robin's ingenious plan to ship 23 cartons of Styrofoam peanuts, flushes him out. Agatha gets just enough information before he slits his own throat to lead her to the now closed mental institution where Walter underwent his rehabilitation. There, she finds Walter's belongings as preserved by the Doctor as well as Walter's original manuscript. She collaborates with her friends to hide the skeleton of Laura Tollins which Walter and Robin dig up based on clues to the whereabouts they find by circling the 23rd word every 23rd page. Sure enough, there it is just below the 23rd step. Back at home, in a mesmerizing, spiraling scene of cataclysmic revelations, Walter accuses Agatha of writing the book herself. He's not sure why she would bring it into their lives at this point, but all of his evidence points right to her. She knows, by this time, however, the truth, that Walter has written it, and that he has endured incredible psychological trauma before their marriage. The humble dogcatcher was, indeed, haunted by the number 23, driven to psychosis and murderous rage, and then rehabilitated. When all of this finally comes clear to him, he realizes the right thing to do is to turn himself in and to free the innocent college professor who has served more than 12 years for a crime he did not commit.
The complexity and depth of Walter Sparrow is a literary character masterpiece that took an incredible talent to bring to life. Say what you will about supernatural dogs that walk the earth looking out for the victims, but that doesn't change the sheer brilliance of Jim Carrey in this role. Truly, this is a defining moment in the career for a man who yes, sadly, portrayed Lloyd Christmas at a much earlier point in his development. This portrayal sets Carrey far, far above others of his generation of actors and finally establishes the depth of his talent. Hopefully, he will continue to seek roles that force him to take roads less traveled and challenge his abilities to the fullest. It's not that just anyone can put on a CGI mask and contort their face into bizarre and amusing shapes and sizes, it's that, in the greater scheme of things, such roles have not pushed him to his fullest capacity.
The complexity and depth of Walter Sparrow is a literary character masterpiece that took an incredible talent to bring to life. Say what you will about supernatural dogs that walk the earth looking out for the victims, but that doesn't change the sheer brilliance of Jim Carrey in this role. Truly, this is a defining moment in the career for a man who yes, sadly, portrayed Lloyd Christmas at a much earlier point in his development. This portrayal sets Carrey far, far above others of his generation of actors and finally establishes the depth of his talent. Hopefully, he will continue to seek roles that force him to take roads less traveled and challenge his abilities to the fullest. It's not that just anyone can put on a CGI mask and contort their face into bizarre and amusing shapes and sizes, it's that, in the greater scheme of things, such roles have not pushed him to his fullest capacity.
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Click for 'Review Lite' [a 150-word review of this film]
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Other Projects Featuring The Number 23 (2007)
Cast Members
Jim Carrey
• Virginia Madsen • Logan LermanDirector
Joel Schumacher
Writer
Fernley Phillips
| CD Soundtrack | DVD | VHS |
The Number 23 (2007) Review-lite [150-word cap]
Jim Carrey did the right thing considering where to take his career. The Joel Schumacher-directed The Number 23 was an edgy but, nonetheless, wise choice as it showcases all sides of his. The film The Number 23 itself represents an incredible psychological plunge into grandiose paranoia set in motion by a father who believed that the number was ruining while ruling his very existence. A dog catcher named Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is given a very special blood-red, covered book for his birthday entitled, Number 23. Soon after, the number starts to take over his life as well. In a dual role as Fingerling, Jim Carey presents his darker side with tattooed arms and long locks while using his facial expressions and dulcet tones to carry this role. His sad, glassy eyes and mournful pained look reveal a truly tortured, mind-bent soul. Jim Carrey was absolutely extraordinary
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