The Great Debate: Worst Jim Carrey Movie, "The Cable Guy" vs. "The Number 23"

"I swear to God, I'll play this saxophone all night, you ingrates!!"

It's hard to let go of things. Jim Carrey was my favorite actor for years, and what's funny was that he seemed to mature as I did, almost paralleling my growth from stupid child to slightly smarter teenager. When I was ten, "The Mask" and "Dumb and Dumber" won many awards that I made up, and I was spouting "Ace Ventura" catchphrases like the idiot he played in the film. On June 5th, 1998 -- I still remember the date, I know -- my parents and I went to see "The Truman Show"; it introduced me to more thought-provoking, dramatic fare and quickly became my all-time favorite movie. I must have seen "The Truman Show" a dozen times the first year it came out, and although I haven't seen it in a few years, I'm still pretty certain I can recite most of the dialogue.

Time past. Carrey did Milos Forman's "Man on the Moon", another brilliant film that challenged me and my taste in movies. Jim Carrey was fucking it for me: he blossomed from the hilarious stupidity of yore to the dramatic bravado not even I thought he had in him. And I mean, of COURSE it went downhill, because everyone stumbles, and even Kevin Spacey made "K-Pax". "Bruce Almighty", "Fun With Dick and Jane," "Me Myself and Irene"... all comedies I would have appreciated at ten years old, but they now churn my stomach. And I mean, he made "Eternal Sunshine" and he MADE "Eternal Sunshine" just because Jim Carrey is still one of the most talented actors on this planet and can dabble in greatness whenever he damn well pleases. I like to think of "Eternal Sunshine" as his warning shot, tipping us all off that, after he stops making shitty studio flicks, he will be reincarnated as a hip indie actor and work with Richard Linklater or Alexander Payne. The point is, right now Jim Carrey doesn't know what to do with his career, and when he starred in Joel Muthafuckin Schumacher's "The Number 23" this past February, many people dubbed it his worst feature, and held up red flags for career resuscitation.

The topic tonight: IS "The Number 23" his worst film, or does Ben Stiller's 1996 film "The Cable Guy" still take the cake? Even Carrey would probably admit that these are his worst offerings, although some would mention "The Majestic" or "Fun With Dick and Jane" in the conversation. To them I say: "The Majestic" is misguided and retarded but with its heart in the right place (the Al Sharpton of dramas...?) while I remember literally nothing about "Fun With Dick and Jane". No, seriously. Not a damn thing. Do you? Does it even exist?

So let's start with "The Cable Guy", a god-awful penis wart of a movie that makes you hate Jim Carrey with every inch of your cowering soul. He plays a cable guy (duh!) who becomes obsessed with hanging out with Matthew Broderick, reaching a "Fatal Attraction" point when he does some stuff to piss Broderick off and then crosses a line with his girlfriend and abducts her, or something. I don't remember much about the actual plot, but I remember key scenes very vividly: Carrey and Broderick playing basketball and pissing people off, Carrey and Broderick jousting at a Renaissance restaurant, Carrey playing a naughty party game with Broderick's parents. Throughout all of this, Carrey plays his character as the most annoying person in the entire planet. I know that this is a black comedy (Ben Stiller's dickfaced humor wouldn't expand to mainstream yuks until "Zoolander") and the cable guy is supposed to be more creepy than laugh-out-loud, but it's difficult to have any interest in a character that you downright loathe. Broderick sort of stumbles through this awkwardly, and Leslie Mann shrugs her way through the part of the girlfriend, but this is a Jim Carrey vehicle whose script Homer Simpson once attacked for "almost ruining Jim Carrey's career", and he's right. This isn't just a misfire that sent audience home dissatisfied, though. "The Cable Guy" is monumentally bad, to a point that you thought Carrey would never breach again. No, he COULD never breach again.

Until now. After working on "Batman Forever" together, Carrey and Joel Muthafuckin Schumacher decided to hook up again for a thriller, a genre which the actor had never touched before. "The Number 23" is about a lot of things, but mostly about the number 23. His character, Walter Sparrow, is a dog catcher. He comes in contact with a mysterious book called "The Number 23", in which an author named Topsy Kretts explains how the number 23 is around a lot, and Sparrow becomes obsessed with it as well. He starts having fantasies as the book's sexy/silly protagonist, a man by the dashing name of Fingerling. He has a tattoo, plays the saxophone, and generally fucks shit up. Well, Sparrow starts going crazy, and threatens his wife, and tries to find the author of the book to understand its meaning, and catches a dog or two (damn dogs, sometimes they just need to be caught!) Then the movie starts going to hell, and key plot points involve a man stabbing himself in the neck, an evil dog who is the pup version of the Grim Reaper, and the skeleton of a woman who died on her 23rd birthday (coincidence...?) I wish I could reveal more, especially the ending, where the entire plot of the movie is carefully explained and everything still sounds like a laughably convoluted mess, but you'll just have to check it out for yourself. "The Number 23" may not be Joel Muthafuckin Schumacher's worst film (shout-out to "Batman & Robin"!), but this is Carrey's most ridiculous role that isn't trying to be ridiculous. It's unbelievable that this even got made.

Ah, but is it worse than "The Cable Guy"? It's hard to say. "The Number 23" is definitely constructed worse than "The Cable Guy"; while "Cable Guy" just falls completely flat as a comedy, there is something fundamentally wrong with "The Number 23", and I don't think it could have ever worked, no matter how many times it was retooled. But "The Cable Guy" is far more annoying than "The Number 23". It makes you angry while watching it, like a black hole that absorbs any inch of happiness. "The Number 23" just sort of rolls off you as a hilarious bomb, and may even evoke a hint of sympathy here and there, just because there ARE some talented people being wasted here (Virginia Madsen, coming off of "Sideways", apparently decided that the best way to follow up an Oscar nomination is to lose your fucking mind and be in "Firewall" and "The Number 23"). The same can be said for the actors in "The Cable Guy", probably even more so. It's got Broderick, Mann, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, George Segal, and Janeane Garofolo and David Cross even drop by. But the problem is that it stays with you. After you watch "The Cable Guy", you just wanna kill something, so that the small part of you that died with the movie will have some company.

And to clinch the win, Jim Carrey is ten times more unwatchable in "The Cable Guy"; in "The Number 23" he just runs around confused a lot, like most dog catchers do, while in "The Cable Guy" he is constantly mugging for the camera, making contorted expressions, and talking in a searingly bothersome lisp. Even if "The Number 23" was a worse movie, there is no way in hell Jim Carrey gives a worse performance in it than in "The Cable Guy". Jesus, just thinking about "The Cable Guy" gets me pissed off. "The Number 23" may be a horrendous film that succeeds on no level, but at least it doesn't damage the world as a whole, something "The Cable Guy" inevitably does. Therefore, "The Cable Guy" is still Jim Carrey's worst movie. By the way, I am seeing the number 23 everywhere: on Michael Jordan's basketball jersey, on a number line after 22, etc....

So Jim Carrey is no longer my favorite actor, and it's sad that I don't really have one anymore (top of the heap right now is Bill Murray, Ryan Gosling, Jason Schwartzmann, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and John Cena), but I'll always take notice when he's in a new movie. Like I said, he's unbelievably talented, and once he pulls his head out of his talking ass, he can accomplish great things. I would be shocked if Carrey didn't go on to win at least one Oscar. But probably not for "The Number 23 II: The Number 24", which I really hope gets made.

Just to add, Walter Sparrow's son in "The Number 23", played by Logan Lerman, is named Robin Sparrow. I don't think enough people appreciate how awesome that is.