"The Cable Guy" can never decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a drama, a thriller, or a social satire. Not enough of the comedy is funny, or of the same type; any attempt at drama is undercut because of the annoying lisping of Carrey's character, and the movie is never particularly thrilling because we don't care about any of the characters. The one small area where the movie succeeds is in its satire. Even here the points made have a slight whiff of familiarity about them. Whilst the one thing "The Cable Guy" can never reasonably be accused of is unoriginality, the theme that TV can be a corrupting influence is hardly groundbreaking insight.
As mentioned before, the comedy here alternates between the kind of silly slapstick we've seen Jim do before (the "Medieval Times" & basketball scenes) and much darker comedy that borders on not being funny at all (the violence that is not portrayed as slapstick) Neither of these routes would I have had a problem with if they had just decided which one they were going to use and stuck to it. Instead, they try to combine both. Slapstick should not be present in a 'dark' comedy, it just destroys the tone.
Broderick is annoyingly whiny in his role as Steven Kovacks. I would have though that the object was to show just how clingy the Carrey character is in his quest for friendship, but the supposed 'hero' is almost as pathetic as he is! Admittedly, some of the elements in the film would have worked well as vignettes, as they are wonderfully realised, but they don't suit the bigger picture. It is possible that audiences stayed away from this because it was Carrey's attempt at something 'different', but that never harmed "The Truman Show", did it? More likely it flopped because it really isn't a very good film.
As mentioned before, the comedy here alternates between the kind of silly slapstick we've seen Jim do before (the "Medieval Times" & basketball scenes) and much darker comedy that borders on not being funny at all (the violence that is not portrayed as slapstick) Neither of these routes would I have had a problem with if they had just decided which one they were going to use and stuck to it. Instead, they try to combine both. Slapstick should not be present in a 'dark' comedy, it just destroys the tone.
Broderick is annoyingly whiny in his role as Steven Kovacks. I would have though that the object was to show just how clingy the Carrey character is in his quest for friendship, but the supposed 'hero' is almost as pathetic as he is! Admittedly, some of the elements in the film would have worked well as vignettes, as they are wonderfully realised, but they don't suit the bigger picture. It is possible that audiences stayed away from this because it was Carrey's attempt at something 'different', but that never harmed "The Truman Show", did it? More likely it flopped because it really isn't a very good film.