The Number 23

It starts promisingly. I can’t deny that to begin with the topic seems interesting and the movie has some atmosphere. But in the second half, the screenplay goes haywire and all the atmosphere goes down the drain. Surprisingly this time it isn’t so much the fault of Schumacher, who tries his very best and manages to stuff some visual idea or atmosphere into a few scenes - it’s the screenplay. Which is a shame because the topic could doubtlessly have made a good foundation for a movie, because the point it’s trying to get across really isn’t that dumb. It’s just very badly presented here. The result is a mediocre thriller that video rental stores are full of. Another in a row of uninspiring movies from Joel Schumacher’s rather unstable filmography. (06/18/2007)

This film initially delights with well-written characters and an interesting and concise plot as the mundane trapping service member starts to get to know the hard-boiled detective in the book with the femme fatale in his bed, and with a pretty interesting twisted journey, which leads us to the finale, where everything jams, rattles, overheats, catches fire, explodes, sets the whole house and the orphanage nearby on fire, and ends in smoldering ruins. So maybe next time. (02/12/2020)

Schumacher is a devil. He carves out a spectacular visual with dynamic editing, squeezing the atmosphere to dizzying heights and enjoying the amazingly stylized noir line in every second. He has nothing else left. The story itself is only a weaker version of any paranoid spectacle in the preface, but once the main hero reaches the end of the twenty-second chapter, the script shifts to the highest speed and suddenly pulls from the steepest cliff of comfortable highway. Everything merges into an unwatchable chaos, where scenes hardly connect, Carrey confusedly chases numerical assumptions, and not exactly stupid but desperately predictable punchline buries everything in the coat of a strongly below-average one-liner. (11/10/2007)

Between 11 pm of 16 July and 23 July I peed 23 times. Now, tell me, isn’t that suspicious? It’s shocking!!! Now, seriously. Does Jim Carrey read the scripts before singing the contracts? Has Joel Schumacher gone definitely mad? He is, however, thanks to the occasionally nice visuals, innocent in this, I think. It's just that the script is a terrible piece of crap. It's not so much the obsession with the number (I know a few people around me with obsessive disorder, so I know what hell is like) and the basic premise is not bad at all. But the way it's narrated, drawn out and acted (Carrey's tattoos are terrible, but otherwise he's probably the worst I've seen), it's an ordeal. The most stupid film of (not only) this year. This film, ladies and gentlemen, despite the strong competition from LaBute's The Wicker Man, is a sure winner of the upcoming Golden Raspberries! PS: Jim Carrey should pray the Lord's Prayer 23 times to be pardoned by the movie god and his fortune. (07/30/2007)

If you have a high-quality script, actors, and director, you can achieve a masterpiece in the mysterious drama genre, just like Fight Club was in its time. However, if you have a weak script, not even a diligent director and a star-studded cast can save it. For Jim Carrey, the film represented an exceptional opportunity to play a truly dark and complicated character that had never appeared in his career before. In fact, Jim never went beyond the grotesque character of Uncle Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. However, all his energy goes to waste because his paranoid character simply cannot develop properly in the unfortunate and predictable script. Perhaps the best difference between a top-notch film and a mediocre one is characterized by the final scene in Fight Club when all certainties of the existing world collapse and the anti-hero of the story knows that he is personally responsible for it. In The Number 23, you get to see an overly moralistic scene that undermines the previous plot to the point of absurdity. Overall impression: 35%. (09/01/2016)