This movie has no respect for the viewer's time. It takes a 15 minute story and stretches it into 95 minutes. In order to achieve this, they have to use a very slow narration and have everyone run around with some implausible frantic angst. By the time this movie showed anything interesting in the plot, I just didn't care. The problem is not in the acting, but instead the pacing. The story is just weak. Jim Carrey is a capable actor, but his attempts to inject light humor into a serious role is just out of place. His style of humor is not generic, so he comes across as a watered down version of himself. The number 23 causes great grief and frustration to the people in the story, but the justification for this is never logical. At most it's just mildly interesting. Jim Carrey has far more ability in a serious role than this movie reveals. Don't waste your money seeing this in the theater. Rent this movie if you've had problems sleeping. If you are still wide awake after 10 minutes, then you liked it more than I did. I was not fond of the lighting and artistic aspects of the film making either. A lot of passive visual eye candy was thrown at the viewer with lighting or effects and it did little to enhance the already weak story.
Review of The Number 23
