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The Number 23 (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 181
Fresh: 15
Rotten:166
Average Rating: 3.5/10
Consensus: Jim Carrey has been sharp in a number of non-comedic roles, but this lurid, overheated, and self-serious potboiler is not one of them. The Number 23 is clumsy, unengaging, and mostly confusing.
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Occult, Murder, Fantasy Worlds
Theatrical Release: Feb 23, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $35,063,732
Synopsis: In Joel Schumacher's psychological thriller THE NUMBER 23, Jim Carrey takes on another dramatic role. Carrey's character is similar to his roles in THE TRUMAN SHOW and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: he portrays an average man... In Joel Schumacher's psychological thriller THE NUMBER 23, Jim Carrey takes on another dramatic role. Carrey's character is similar to his roles in THE TRUMAN SHOW and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: he portrays an average man thrust into quite extraordinary situations after a series of strange events cause him to question everything he's ever taken for granted. On his birthday, Walter Sparrow is given a mysterious and tattered book called THE NUMBER 23 by his loving wife, Agatha (Virginia Madsen). As Walter reads the book, he quickly notices its alarming similarities to his own life. Rather than stop reading, he continues, unknowingly inviting the book to take over his life. The deeper Walter gets into the plot, the more he sees himself in its protagonist, Fingerling, whom we see through highly stylized sequences in which Carrey appears as the seedy detective character. Madsen is also present in these scenes, cast as Fingerling's pain-loving girlfriend Fabrizia. As Fingerling and Fabrizia's love affair inches towards its fiery conclusion, we learn the role the number 23 has played in their story and will play in Walter's future if he cannot keep his growing obsession with it at bay. While Carrey and Madsen are adept at playing a man gone mad and a headstrong wife in crisis, they are most fascinating as their dark counterparts, and Schumacher succeeds in creating a truly intoxicating noirish underworld of sex and death through those sequences. [More]
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Rhona Mitra
Director: Joel Schumacher
Director: Joel Schumacher
Screenwriter: Fernley Phillips
Producer: Tripp Vinson, Beau Flynn
Studio: New Line Cinema
DVD Info
Reviews for The Number 23
Joel Schumacher does a chaotic job of turning this thriller into indigestible jelly %u2013 it wobbles formless for a while, finally settling into the shape of a duck
Jim Carrey tries his best, but the film never gets psychologically creepy, never makes the viewer question what is fiction, what is reality, and most importantly what the number 23 is all about.
So much cascading hatred for the audience runs through the flickering images of this film!
... the film astoundingly reaches new levels of unintentional self-parody with every turn.
THE NUMBER 23 starts off promisingly but quickly devolves into an uneven mess.
What could have been an intriguing psychological drama turns into a mediocre crime thriller.
The Number 23 is Schumacher's first stab at a scary movie, the end result just doesn't quite add up.
The Number 23 is just a sordid exercise for a comedy actor to stretch his dramatic muscle.
Sem conseguir convencer o espectador do básico (a onipresença do número 23), o roteiro chega a apelar para absurdos para tentar provar sua lógica tortuosa.
...tombe dans pratiquement tous les pièges dans lesquels le genre se complait mollement depuis déjà plusieurs années
While it's often fun watching Jim Carrey handle more serious material the same cannot always be said of director Joel Schumacher.
Pretty much every important date in history...can be teased to fit the pattern. What can't be hammered out of this fixation, apparently, is a coherent movie.
Schumacher is as much to blame for this mess as Carrey is. Over and over again, he mistakes looming shadows and manic outbursts for tension, and his ponderous, ham-fisted directorial style creates more questions than it answers.
I think that "The Number 23" is supposed to have a twist at the end.But a twist is supposed to be something that you can't see coming, something that takes you by surprise. In this sometimes entertaining but mostly befuddling film, the only confounding el
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