A psychological thriller that is a murky mess.
The Number 23 (2007)
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Reviews Counted:184
Fresh:15
Rotten:169
Average Rating:3.5/10
Consensus: Jim Carrey has been sharp in a number of non-comedic roles, but this lurid, overheated, and self-serious potboiler is not one of them. The Number 23 is clumsy, unengaging, and mostly confusing.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for violence, disturbing images, sexuality and language
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Mystery, Occult, Thriller, Murder, Theatrical Release, Fantasy Worlds
Theatrical Release:23-02-2007
Synopsis: In Joel Schumacher's psychological thriller THE NUMBER 23, Jim Carrey takes on another dramatic role. Carrey's character is similar to his roles in THE TRUMAN SHOW and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE... In Joel Schumacher's psychological thriller THE NUMBER 23, Jim Carrey takes on another dramatic role. Carrey's character is similar to his roles in THE TRUMAN SHOW and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: he portrays an average man thrust into quite extraordinary situations after a series of strange events cause him to question everything he's ever taken for granted. On his birthday, Walter Sparrow is given a mysterious and tattered book called THE NUMBER 23 by his loving wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen). As Walter reads the book, he quickly notices its alarming similarities to his own life. Rather than stop reading, he continues, unknowingly inviting the book to take over his life. The deeper Walter gets into the plot, the more he sees himself in its protagonist, Fingerling, whom we see through highly stylized sequences in which Carrey appears as the seedy detective character. Madsen is also present in these scenes, cast as Fingerling's pain-loving girlfriend Fabrizia. As Fingerling and Fabrizia's love affair inches towards its fiery conclusion, we learn the role the number 23 has played in their story and will play in Walter's future if he cannot keep his growing obsession with it at bay. While Carrey and Madsen are adept at playing a man gone mad and a headstrong wife in crisis, they are most fascinating as their dark counterparts, and Schumacher succeeds in creating a truly intoxicating noirish underworld of sex and death through those sequences. [More]
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Rhona Mitra
Director: Joel Schumacher
Director: Joel Schumacher
Screenwriter: Fernley Phillips
Producer: Tripp Vinson, Beau Flynn
Studio: New Line Cinema
Reviews for The Number 23
An overworked horror-thriller based on an absolutely ridiculous concept that, at various points in the movie, comes tantalizingly close to working.
Schumacher's style is too slick, his sense of the macabre too watered-down, and his concentration on the thematic implications of the story too distracted by more generalized ideas to really get at the dark heart of the material.
If you circle every 23rd word in this review, you'll wind up with a message that makes no sense. Neither does paying to see this movie.
The Number 23 lacks cohesion. (Director) Joel Schumacher flails around like a drowning man, and takes his picture under with him.
If long-winded Wikipedia writers or "Lost" bloggers wrote a thriller, it would turn out something like this. It starts as a dark variant on "Stranger Than Fiction" and ends with a melodramatic flood of embarrassing exposition.
Once all the blood and madness run out, The Number 23 is one of those disposable movies that so often fill the film industry's off season.
With its glaring plot holes, over-reliance on coincidence and unexplained central conceit, it is hard to fathom why this project drew the likes of Jim Carry and Virginia Madsen.
Everything in the film may add up to 23, but no matter how you do the math, it doesn't add up to a good movie.
A supposedly tangled tale that's ultimately as easy to unravel as two nylon stockings.
... just another movie designed to cash in on the gullibility of ticket buyers.
What's wrong with The Number 23 can't be blamed on Schumacher -- though he ought to have known better than to sign on board this project.
There may be filmmakers worse than Joel Schumacher, but few so talentless have worked so steadily for so long....this is just a bigger budget, even more idiotic version of Darren Aronofsky's Pi.
The film operates on a much broader scale than it has any business doing, thus the answers, when they are finally provided in the now-obligatory talky final ten minutes, are frustratingly bankrupt.
There are any number of ways to scare audiences, but numerology isn't one of them, especially if nothing else in the movie adds up.
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