reMedia!

An entertainment blog that pops culture right in the kisser.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

film | Mug, rob, repeat

Exactly how much fun you'll have with FUN WITH DICK AND JANE depends largely on your tolerance for Manic-Shtick Jim Carrey, who is not to be confused with Serious-Actor Jim Carrey, who was all shades of terrific in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Man on the Moon and The Truman Show. No, Manic-Shtick Jim Carrey is a Jim Carrey I can occasionally take (Batman Forever, most of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) but usually leave (Liar Liar, Bruce friggin' Almighty), and as soon as he began to mug his way through a spastic rendition of R. Kelly's insufferably anthemic "I Believe I Can Fly" during the opening moments of Dick and Jane, a big neon warning magically appeared between my face and the screen that flashed: DANGER! MANIC-SHTICK JIM CARREY ACTIVATED! THIS MOVIE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN FIVE ... FOUR ... THREE ...

Carrey's family-man executive — KABOOM! — is joyously reaching for the stars because he's about to be promoted to a coveted VP slot at his media mega-corp, but no sooner does he land his big-bucks dream job than an Enron-ish scandal erupts that tanks the company and shoves him to the back of the very scary unemployment line. The previews for Dick and Jane focus on Carrey and wife Tea Leoni (Deep Impact) resorting to a madcap amateur robbery spree to make ends meet, but that's shoehorned into a 10-minute montage halfway through the film. Until then, it's all overlong set-up — the plasma television is repossessed first, then the BMW, then the sod on the front lawn, har har! — and forced Christmas with the Kranks-ian humor involving Carrey and Leoni's botched attempts to find new careers. And the remaining half-hour, with its utterly disinteresting mock-Ocean's Eleven bank con, assumes that any viewer still watching actually cares about the characters and is engaged by their farcically dire financial situation. Probably not. It's just that lethargy totally counteracts the mental acuity required in forming an escape plan.

The liveliest bit of Fun with Dick and Jane is the running gag in which Carrey and Leoni's pint-sized son (Aaron Michael Drozin) speaks with a Spanish accent, the joke being that his true adult role model is the Latina maid before either of his workaholic parents. ("Don't take away my Telemundo!" he cries as the TV gets removed from the house.) And when the funniest parts of a Jim Carrey comedy come courtesy of a kid with only a handful of scenes, well, there's a problem. D+

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