The Number 23: Critic Reviews

By the end, you'll want to stick around, if only to crack the Jim Carrey code: Is he a real actor after all, or is the rabid urgency with which he keeps trying to be the most real thing about him?

The Number 23 is an accidental comedy starring a deadly serious Jim Carrey.

Mind-numbingly silly conspiracy thriller.

Here's our homage to the film's tortured permutations of the numerals 2 and 3: 3 minus 2 equals 1. And there is only one reason to see this movie: You have absolutely nothing better to do.

As Sam Goldwyn said: Include me out.

The only fright in the nominal thriller The Number 23 is how shaggy, gaunt, and wiped out Jim Carrey looks.

Though students of formulaic screenwriting may figure this mystery out long before Walter does, there won't be much satisfaction in it because it is totally preposterous.

There's little in this first script by Fernley Phillips but bloodless notions -- nothing that might qualify, by the light of day, as entertainment.

How do we loathe thee, The Number 23? Let us count the ways.

Newcomer Fernley Phillips' screenplay eventually binds itself into too tight a knot. But it also has some admirable ambitions about family, responsibility, memory.

Shot by computer-enhanced shot, The Number 23 is impressive, but those shots don't come from anywhere or build on one another.

A thriller like this needs to pack a lot of firepower on the backend. Unfortunately, all we get is a weak, much-anticipated little pop.

This is the sort of film where no one can say anything without someone else commenting: 'Thirty-two -- 23 reversed!' Yes, and what do you know? There are 23 letters in the phrase 'better luck next time, folks.'

Narrated in voice-over by the hero, the movie is an object lesson in the dangers of having a storyteller who manufactures his own logic.

A numerological, super-dumb-ological thriller.

It's so cheesy that it's almost transcendent.

Charlie Chaplin did not star in The Wolfman. Jerry Lewis did not attempt Hamlet. Jonathan Winters never appeared in Death of a Salesman. Thank heavens.

Not only does the film have no sense of story, it has little sense of itself, including a long postscript just to untangle the knots.

Contrived, incomprehensible gibberish that exists for the sole purpose of exposing a miscast star in a career stretch for which he is pathetically unprepared. It's the worst kind of flop, a flop for its own sake.

Gimmicky numerology plus Jim Carrey minus narrative coherence equals The Number 23.

The main test of a twisty thriller is, would you watch it again? You won't, because the solution turns out to be both uncomplicated and cliche.

The Number 23 plays a bit too much like Memento for Dummies.

Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times. Charles Manson was born Nov. 12 (11 + 12 = 23). The Mayans believed the world would end on Dec. 23, 2012 (20 + 1 + 2 = 23). My brother stole my pogo stick when I was 23 and broke it into 23 pieces.

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.

If nothing else -- and, trust me, there ain't much else -- the title has a satisfying ring of candour. Yep, The Number 23 is all about the number 23.