'23' adds up to failure

"The Number 23" has the premise of a great film - too bad it suffers and dies from bad acting.

Screenwriter Fernley Phillips crafts a masterful tale of intrigue and suspense. Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a mild-mannered dogcatcher. His luck changes for the worse after being bit by a dog on his birthday, which makes him late for his evening plans. On that night, his wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen), buys him a book called "The Number 23." As Walter reads - and fixates on - the book, we watch through his eyes as the narrator, Fingerling (in a duel role by Carrey), enjoys the company of a kinky woman named Fabrizia (in a duel role by Madsen) and learns of the curse associated with the number 23 from a sexy young woman referred to as the Suicide Blond (Lynn Collins).

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique's work is extraordinary. The tale within the tale unfolds in a noir-soaked sequence showcasing Libatique's genius, along with that of director Joel Schumacher. Schumacher is outstanding in blending reality and imagination in what could have been the best suspense thriller of the year, had Carrey been capable of portraying a frightening character. He pulled off a serious role in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," but serious and subdued may be far enough away from his usual for him to succeed by maintaining total opposition to his usual actor-self. In "The Number 23," his exaggerated facial expressions, meant to convey mental distress, cross the border into comical too many times. Madsen has the opposite problem - she has so little affect that it's hard to believe his kind, caring wife is disturbed at all by Walter's obsession.

There may be a real fixation with 23 among conspiracy theorists, but I was so disappointed in the acting that I left the film sans inspiration to brood over the math connecting the Oklahoma City bombing, Hiroshima and the September 11, 2001 attacks to the number's supposed curse I enjoyed the surprising ending but it wasn't worth watching 95 minutes of poor acting. "The Number 23" certainly isn't worthy of seeing in the theatre, but might be worth a two or three dollar rental for the cinematography alone.

Originally published in The Chronicle in March 2007 as Jade Lee Culberson