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.
The Number 23 (2007)
Tomatometer
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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: R [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:Feb 23, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $35,063,732
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
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Release:
Oct 20, 2009
Reviews for The Number 23
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.
More entertaining than most of the movies nominated for an Oscar this year.
There definitely is something to this whole 23 thing. I bet that if you circled the 23rd word in each paragraph of this review, you'd find a secret message.
I don't care what anybody else says. The acting was good and the script was complelling. So there!
The answers to the story's questions are even sillier than the questions.
Spookily, it must have been in about the 23rd minute that my spirits began to sink and I thought: “There’d better be an awfully clever pay-off at the end of this.” Well, there isn’t.
Thanks to director Joel Schumacher, all of Carrey's shirts had nipples.
This sophomoric psychological thriller might not be the best movie Jim Carrey ever made, but it certainly is his worst.
My biggest complaint was how this story just completely fell apart in about 40 minutes. I wanted to feel sorry for Walter, but all I could do is shake my head and laugh.
Like a poorly designed house of cards, 23 tumbles when it becomes apparent that the weak premise sports an even weaker plot. Tack another disaster on to Schumacher's cinematic belt.
it never does succeed in finding anything truly sinister about the number 23, except, of course, that it will always be associated with this flick
Suicide Blonde's intensity, her fear, her too-white dress and room and lighting, her violent death: it's all a little much.
One of the last lines uttered in The Number 23 is, 'It may not be the happiest of endings, but it's the right one'. Try the wrong one.
...it's as if debuting screenwriter Fernley Phillips was too lazy to even rip off second rate King.
Much depends on mood, tone, and suspension of disbelief, but Schumacher never succeeds in making us buy into any of this. The result is a tough slog through some unpleasant territory that never makes sense or is tied together.
While bolstered by an intriguing premise, the thriller The Number 23 cops out for a slick, Hollywood-ized ending
Watching Carrey babble gibberish about the sinister nature of 23 in scene after hyperventilating scene isn't any more fun or enlightening than listening to street-corner lunatics discourse on similar topics.
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