Then you have a name like Jim Carrey, who is well-known for his comedic roles in the Ace Ventura series and one of my favorite comedies, Liar Liar. Like Adam Sandler, Carrey has ventured into the serious world also, doing movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which is truly and amazing movie... please rent it if you have not seen it... it will blow your mind) and now The Number 23. Therefore, you have a big time director and big-time movie star. That is enough to bring people to see your movie.

I personally thought that The Number 23 trailers were decent and they created hype for me. I really was interested in where the movie was going to go and how it was going to be. The Number 23 stars Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen, who is also starring in another movie opening this weekend called The Astronaut Farmer.

The Story: I do want to say that there are a lot of twists and turns in the flick, so I am going to give you the basic plot breakdown so that I do not give any of the twists away. It will be a little more detailed than what the trailer gave you, but it will not ruin anything. The movie opens up and Walter Sparrow, played by Jim Carrey, is shown working as an Animal Control detective. He basically hunts down stray animals that are disturbing people. It is currently 4:59pm and he is ready to end his shift, when he receives a call saying there is a stray dog that needs to be captured. This makes him late in picking up his wife, played by Virginia Madsen, who wonders into a book store and finds a book called "The Number 23" by Topsy Kretts.

Since it is Walter Sparrow's birthday, she buys the book for him. He begins to read it and starts to mimic his exact childhood and life. The movie takes us into the world of the book, where we have the same people as different characters in the book world. For example, Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow in the real world, but plays the character "Fingerling" in the book. All in all, the book starts to mirror his exact life, even his day to day activities and it starts to drive him insane. He starts becoming obsessed with the number 23. Everything about him adds up to the number 23; i.e. his driver's license number adds up to 23, as does his birthday.

The movie shows you how ridiculous and insane it is because any number can be shown to mean something. It is all in how you manipulate the numbers. For example, take the station that the Junkies are on, which is WJFK. In the movie, Carrey assigns a number to each letter in the alphabet, with the number 1 for A and 26 for Z. WJFK would add up like, 23+10+6+11, which would make 50. That would obviously not work. But take 106.7, which are the station number for WJFK. You can take those numbers and manipulate them into the number 23. 10+6+7 equals 23. That obviously seems like a stretch though right? It is; which is the point the flick is trying to make. You can make yourself so paranoid that it drives to do insane things.

The Review: Overall, I thought the movie had a very interesting concept, but was not executed as well as it should have been. Schumacher does a great job at keeping the pacing extremely fast and you really never lose interest in the film but the biggest problem the film had was the fact that everything seemed to come together so easily. Obviously movies take you into a fantasy world, but when they become so far-fetched, it gets ridiculous. I would say that first hour or so of the movie was very good and extremely interesting. As the end approached and things were beginning to be revealed, it seemed way too easy. The pieces fit together way to well.

There were also so many things that were so far-fetched and just down right cheesy. You will see a scene between Carrey and Madsen towards the end which was way too over acted. I did think Carrey played a good role and it was good to see him in a serious way. One thing you will notice is that a lot of Jim Carrey's earlier characters from films like Ace Ventura and Liar Liar make a little appearance in this film. The one that came to mind was Ace Ventura because he was an animal detective in the film. That one was easy. When it came to acting in The Number 23, Virginia Madsen did a pretty decent job too. There is definitely something about her that I find extremely attractive.

The Verdict: Based on the fact that film had an interesting concept, but became really far fetched towards the end, I am going to give the film 3 BDKs. It was still a decent movie, but not worth paying the theatre price. The Number 23 is a great rental, hence the 3 BDK rating.

Go to BDK's website.