Movie Review: The Number 23

The Number 23

Numerology is simple. First, you put numbers to everything. Then you throw out everything that doesn't match up the way you want it to. What's left is a list of "proof" that numerology actually works (it helps to be credulous; it helps even more if you're a little paranoid). Unfortunately, The Number 23 doesn't even add up to that much.

Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) is an animal control officer. His wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen) bakes fancy cakes for a living. They have a son, Robin (Logan Lerman), and a house in the suburbs. They also have a fairly ordinary life. But that only lasts until Walter's birthday...

Counting the minutes until quitting time on his February 3 birthday, Walter gets a last minute call from his dispatcher about a loose dog. He's not happy to get the call so late, but he heads for an alley behind a restaurant where the bulldog was sighted. He finds and identifies the dog whose name, he learns, is Ned. But at the last second, Ned bites him and runs away. As if being bitten doesn't cap his day off nicely enough, he's now late to pick up his wife from work.

Agatha, meanwhile, gets bored waiting for Walter and so she wanders into a nearby bookstore. As she's browsing, she finds a book she believes Walter might like, and she buys it for him for his birthday. The book is entitled The Number 23. Agatha reads some of the book and finds it interesting and strangely compelling, but Walter quickly becomes obsessed by it. The author has written, he claims, a story all about him! Soon enough, and the deeper he gets into the narrative, he begins to see the number 23 everywhere he looks.

The book, which begins with a sad and traumatic childhood for the character who tells readers to call him Fingerling, rapidly becomes even darker. Fingerling grows up to become a detective, and he tells his erstwhile readers about both his personal life and his beautiful girlfriend, and his professional life and the bodies he musts sometimes help to clean up. Walter, who is horrified by Fingerling's descent into darkness, begins to see signs of a comparable descent in himself. When Fingerling commits murder, Walter begins to wonder if he can stop himself from doing exactly the same thing.

Jim Carrey is, of course, a brilliant comic actor. But he's done some very credible dramatic work as well, so casting him here wasn't a bad idea in that context. But Carrey never seemed to really inhabit this character as he did in such previous efforts as The Truman Show and Bruce Almighty, so his acting seems almost forced. Virginia Madsen does a good job. The unbelievability of her character lies at the feet of the writer. Meanwhile, the supporting cast is also good though again not always given particularly sensible lines to speak.

Director Joel Schumacher has a good deal of experience under his belt, and you can tell. The edits and some of the camera techniques are brilliant and very effective. I particularly loved the handling of many of the flashbacks from the color to the camera angles to some very effective edits. My problem here is really with the screenplay. This is Fernley Phillips first script to make it to the big screen and, while the idea is sound and some parts and pieces of it are too, the whole is considerably less than that. In simple terms, it just plain tries too hard. And as an aside, no matter how I worked at it, I simply could not get past the notion that some idiot actually thought naming a character "Robin Sparrow" was cute.

I liked the premise of The Number 23 quite a bit, and I thought the cast and the movie-making in general was just fine. But during this relatively short movie (about an hour and a half), I found myself yawning, fidgeting, and trying desperately to see my watch in the dim light coming from the big screen. At one point, I even seriously considered leaving but told myself it would be over soon so I should stay (it wasn't, but I did). For all of the good things about the movie — and there are some — any time I'm that restless and I'm that anxious to have things done and over with, there's not much I can really say to encourage you to put yourself through the experience. So I won't.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: The Number 23 is rated R for "violence, disturbing images, sexuality and language." Although the R rating might be a little harsh, I don't believe many of the visuals if not the subject matter are suitable for kids. There are some disturbing images including the aftermath of bloody murder; there is some sexuality, including that of the aberrant kind (though not particularly graphic). If you've got teens who insist on seeing this film, I'd allow those 16 and older to go ahead and see it if that's what they really want.