Upon buying a novel, Walter Sparew, a young man who lives with his small family happily, once when he buys a strange novel, everything changes completely, as he finds himself obsessed with the novel and thinks that the novel is about him, according to the similarities between the novel protagonists, the thing that makes him truly mad.
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.
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.
As Walter's/Fingerling's paranoia grows, the viewer is irritatingly yanked back and forth between the real and imagined settings, and left to decide which one is more ridiculous.
Watching Carrey babble gibberish about the sinister nature of 23 in scene after hyperventilating scene isn't any more fun or enlightening than listening to street-corner lunatics discourse on similar topics.
The Number 23 is an accidental comedy starring a deadly serious Jim Carrey.
The Scorecard Review
March 03, 2008
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.
