Janet is overweight and insecure about herself. Her mom constantly nags at her to lose weight, and she feels ashamed to admit she's intelligent. But her teacher is impressed by her writing talent and gives her a new essay to write (with a subject she chooses herself): What makes people laugh.
Does that plot sound boring and generic to you? Well, that's because it pretty much is. I guess they were going for a coming-of-age story, but it's too cheesy and clumsily made to work. Right from the opening scene where Janet and her mom are talking to each other, I was laughing at how horrible the acting was. Ann-Marie MacDonald as the mom is easily the worst actor in the movie. She really sounds like she's reading right off the paper, and is so wooden that a tree could give a more convincing performance than her.
Adah Glassbourgh is hit-and-miss. Sometimes she's okay, other times she makes you cringe. And most of those cringeworthy moments come from when she's trying to be funny, which is a real problem seeing as the movie is billed as a comedy.
But there are a few things lifting it up from being downright terrible. The only ones watching this movie will be die-hard Jim Carrey fans, and he's really good here. You can tell he's not quite as secure as he would be later on, but already back then he showed a clear knack for goofy facial expressions and molding his voice. While the material he's given is fairly weak (too much dialogue like "To make people laugh, you gotta..."), he does his best to elevate it a bit. There's a part where Janet calls him a "clown" in front of her friends, and I'm not sure if it was meant to be funny or serious, but his dumbfounded look as she says it is quite amusing.
There are glimpses of decent chemistry between Tony Moroni (yes that's his actual name oddly enough) and Janet. They are definitely the most bearable scenes with Glassbourgh in them. But then there's the really forced conflict later on where Tony thinks she tries too hard to impress people, like her mom and her friends. She instantly gets pissed off and walks away. I thought this was very confusing since her friends do genuinely seem to care about her besides being a comedian. When she tearfully read her latest essay in front of class and ran out of the room afterwards, one of them later came to her and asked her if she was okay. Sounds like a pretty trustworthy friend to me.
Not sure if this counts as a positive or not, but occasionally I got some unintentional chuckles out of the melodramatism. Especially when Janet would watch TV and there would always be something related to food or to her weight, often accompanied by her mom telling her to lose some. And not just the interactions between her and the mother, but the ones with her friends are just as amusingly awkward.
The pacing is really slow, despite it only being 48 minutes. The storyline is so thin that there are several scenes that are just filler or dragged out for too long. The music is straightup awful at times and feels like straight out of a Lifetime drama.
The worst part of the entire movie is the ending.
Of course, since Jim Carrey is the funnier actor, you want him to do the standup at the end. You're even led to believe that will be the case, seeing as Janet gives him a script to perform with. But instead, the script decides to make him sick, so Janet will have to perform instead. After standing nervously on stage for two minutes, she finally gets the courage to talk. And people start laughing... in the movie, that is. Personally I felt embarrassed at how bad the material was and how horribly she performed it. Standup for movies is very hard to write since a comedy script is different from a standup script. But while trudging through these very long 7 minutes, I started thinking about how brilliant the last scene of The King Of Comedy was. Similarly the whole thing had been building up to that moment, except I actually laughed. I didn't get mad at most of this movie, but with this conclusion I felt pissed off.
In general, Rubberface or more accurately Introducing... Janet is not the worst thing ever. I'm sure it's way better than Copper Mountain at least. But it's still not worth recommending as something other than an odd curiosity.
That being said, the DVD cover is a real "screw you" to the poor unsuspecting customers.
Does that plot sound boring and generic to you? Well, that's because it pretty much is. I guess they were going for a coming-of-age story, but it's too cheesy and clumsily made to work. Right from the opening scene where Janet and her mom are talking to each other, I was laughing at how horrible the acting was. Ann-Marie MacDonald as the mom is easily the worst actor in the movie. She really sounds like she's reading right off the paper, and is so wooden that a tree could give a more convincing performance than her.
Adah Glassbourgh is hit-and-miss. Sometimes she's okay, other times she makes you cringe. And most of those cringeworthy moments come from when she's trying to be funny, which is a real problem seeing as the movie is billed as a comedy.
But there are a few things lifting it up from being downright terrible. The only ones watching this movie will be die-hard Jim Carrey fans, and he's really good here. You can tell he's not quite as secure as he would be later on, but already back then he showed a clear knack for goofy facial expressions and molding his voice. While the material he's given is fairly weak (too much dialogue like "To make people laugh, you gotta..."), he does his best to elevate it a bit. There's a part where Janet calls him a "clown" in front of her friends, and I'm not sure if it was meant to be funny or serious, but his dumbfounded look as she says it is quite amusing.
There are glimpses of decent chemistry between Tony Moroni (yes that's his actual name oddly enough) and Janet. They are definitely the most bearable scenes with Glassbourgh in them. But then there's the really forced conflict later on where Tony thinks she tries too hard to impress people, like her mom and her friends. She instantly gets pissed off and walks away. I thought this was very confusing since her friends do genuinely seem to care about her besides being a comedian. When she tearfully read her latest essay in front of class and ran out of the room afterwards, one of them later came to her and asked her if she was okay. Sounds like a pretty trustworthy friend to me.
Not sure if this counts as a positive or not, but occasionally I got some unintentional chuckles out of the melodramatism. Especially when Janet would watch TV and there would always be something related to food or to her weight, often accompanied by her mom telling her to lose some. And not just the interactions between her and the mother, but the ones with her friends are just as amusingly awkward.
The pacing is really slow, despite it only being 48 minutes. The storyline is so thin that there are several scenes that are just filler or dragged out for too long. The music is straightup awful at times and feels like straight out of a Lifetime drama.
The worst part of the entire movie is the ending.
Of course, since Jim Carrey is the funnier actor, you want him to do the standup at the end. You're even led to believe that will be the case, seeing as Janet gives him a script to perform with. But instead, the script decides to make him sick, so Janet will have to perform instead. After standing nervously on stage for two minutes, she finally gets the courage to talk. And people start laughing... in the movie, that is. Personally I felt embarrassed at how bad the material was and how horribly she performed it. Standup for movies is very hard to write since a comedy script is different from a standup script. But while trudging through these very long 7 minutes, I started thinking about how brilliant the last scene of The King Of Comedy was. Similarly the whole thing had been building up to that moment, except I actually laughed. I didn't get mad at most of this movie, but with this conclusion I felt pissed off.
In general, Rubberface or more accurately Introducing... Janet is not the worst thing ever. I'm sure it's way better than Copper Mountain at least. But it's still not worth recommending as something other than an odd curiosity.
That being said, the DVD cover is a real "screw you" to the poor unsuspecting customers.