Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Number 23

The Number 23 is precisely 13.0434782608695217391304347826 less intense than 300. Take away all the Spartans, the blood, the swords and divide the epicness (Not a word! Why not? What word would be correct?) by 13.0434782608695217391304347826 and what's left?
Jim Carrey getting intensely confused and agitated for a couple hours!
The basic premise is that Jim Carrey's character reads a book that has striking resemblances to his own life, this makes him look deeper into it and eventually he's spotting similarities between the books key theme (The number 23) and everything from the letters in his name to the number of pairs of shoes his wife owns, making him have a complete meltdown and become obsessed with the number 23 to devastating ends! But a number can't really be dangerous! Or can it?
Who cares!
This was a pretty damn good film but in all honesty I had it so hyped up in my mind that I thought it was going to be my next favorite. The whole film is pretty amazing, the plot is inventive, Jim Carrey's acting is once again surprisingly gripping (Just like in The Mask) and the directing gets the feeling of paranoia down. Overall a great film but I feel the ending felt slapped together a little bit... the ending, as far as being in a story sense, is flawless but it's more the execution of it in the film that I feel wasn't as gripping as it could have been... maybe I'm just getting tired of twist endings (Don't give me that "Oh my God! I didn't know it had a twist ending! Thanks a lot, asshole!", every film in existence has a twist ending these days, it's a prerequisite before a script is even looked at by a director) or maybe this film just executed it wrong...

Here's my opinion on films with good twist endings (Look away now if you don't want to know what films have twists)

Sixth Sense
Twelve Monkeys
The Others (Awesome!)
Film Geek (Awesomer!)
Saw
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
Fight Club
The Machinist

Here's my opinion on films that demonstrate fucking awful (or at least, they display twist ending that seem forced or there just for the sake of having a twist) twist endings

Saw 3 (This is top of the list because it was the worst execution of a twist ending I have ever had the misfortune to witness)
High Tension
The Village (Great film otherwise, and actually had a good mid-film twist, maybe the ending twist was unnecessary because of it)
The Number 23
Star Wars III: Revenge Of The Sith (Ok, not a twist because you know it's going to happen but my God what a fucking atrocious film this was!)

I Wasn't The Only One To Wittily Connect The Number 23 and 300

And here's a clip of Jim Carrey trying to scare you!



Anyway, this is a great film that was let down by a twist ending, unlike some of those movies which were terrible films that had a twist ending to try and make them good. So in spite of that major complaint, the number 23 still gets:





The Number 23's Website

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