MOVIE.RttP{The Number 23}

i like (old school) jim carrey and i like shit like memento and fight club so i'm gunna netflix it and hope that i'm less goatcatalyst and more niccolai.

Review: “The Number 23″

By kyle | February 23, 2007

Kyle Smith review of “The Number 23″
Paranoia may destroy ya
2halfstars.gif

95 minutes/Rated R (violence, disturbing images, sexuality, profanity).

Run for your lives, “The Number 23″ is everywhere! Number of times Britney photographed baring her giblets: 23! Combined weight of Olsen twins: 23 pounds! Typical age of girls who rejected me when I was 23: 23! And let’s not even mention the sinking of the Titanic (4/15/1912: adds up to 23), or Charles Manson’s birthday, Nov. 12 (11+12), or Shakespeare’s birth - and death! - date: April 23.

OK, I cheated by applying three different standards for those dates. Besides, “23″ seems neutral on the question of whether you’re better suited for Satanic murder or iambic pentameter. You could hammer-and-tong any number into 23. But as humble dogcatcher Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) reads a novel about a detective - with a life story eerily similar to his own - who gets obsessed with the number 23, you will discover the movie’s grappling hook sunk deeply into your cerebral cortex.

Sparrow notices that his birthday is 2/3, his Social Security number adds up to 23, and even street signs bristle with 23s. His wife (Virginia Madsen) tells him he’s projecting, and a prof (Danny Huston) says he’s paranoid, but that’s OK because we go paranoid with him. You’ll be toying with your own birthday, and director Joel Schumacher can heebie-jeebie you just by showing a digital clock flipping to 11:12. What does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN??

It means a somewhat routine murder mystery, but the transition is smooth to the unanswered questions in the case of a (real) dead girl whose tombstone attracts Sparrow’s quarry, Ned the stray dog. The girl died on her 23rd birthday; N, E and D are the 14th, 5th and 4th letters. Add ‘em up.

In the book Sparrow is reading, a detective called Fingerling (also played by Carrey, in broody, sin-drenched noir sequences dazzlingly photographed by Matthew Libatique) meets a “suicide blonde” who has scribbled equations and dates adding up to 23 all over her walls. When she dies mysteriously, the detective’s mind starts buzzing with 23s; a curse is passed on. It then falls on Sparrow because a character in the book seems to be modeled on Sparrow’s own mother, plus he sees shadows of a stabbing on his ceiling. The character in the novel resembling Sparrow’s wife seems to have something going on with the character resembling Sparrow’s friend the prof, and where exactly does Sparrow’s horny teenage son fit in?

The movie wouldn’t work if it were jokey, but there is a hint of wit - a wink to absurdity - that saves it from being laughable. Characters have names like Topsy Kretts and the sinister-sounding Kyle Flinch; the novel’s private eye says things like, “His guarantee wasn’t worth the blood it was written in.”

The central conceit alone makes this script. But the main test of a twisty thriller is, would you watch it again? You won’t, because the solution turns out to be both uncomplicated and cliché. It leaves you saying not “Whoa!” but just, “Oh.” Because O=15 and H=8 and that makes …