Dir: Dean Parisot. US. 2005. 89mins.
For such a big star, Jim Carrey's career has featureda remarkably stark push-and-pull between appreciative audience reception andstubborn resistance to his whims. While his comedies as a leading man havetypically made a mint, more dramatic-minded turns in The Truman Show, Man On The Moon and EternalSunshine Of The Spotless Mind have faced tougher commercial inroads.
His latest film,
A broadly silly contemporisation of the 1977 film of the same name thatstarred George Segal and Jane Fonda, Fun With Dick And Jane is a remake only in the nominalsense, as the original doesn't have much of a reputation - critically orcommercially - upon which to tread. Troubled production whisperings aside - thefilm required several re-shoots as late as this autumn - reports of its demiseare greatly exaggerated.
Fun With Dick And Jane is being sold as a caper romp - but it'sactually more thoughtful and mannered than heedlessly frisky.
Commercially itshould compare well to Carrey's previous output. Tonally, it has a pinch of
Returns on parwith last year's Christmas smash Meet TheFockers - which sprinted to a $46m opening enroute to a final $280m domestic tally - are unlikely given the strength ofseasonal competition like The Producers.But it should still have a big opening (it rolls out from Dec 21), enjoypositive word-of-mouth and remain a spirited force well through January.
Though rooted in Americancorporate scandal, the film's heightened tones make for an easy and seamlesstranslation to foreign markets, and should ensure solid returns abroad, whereCarrey's comedies have traditionally enjoyed robust reception. Ancillary valuetoo should be quite sustained.
Set in 2000, themovie centres around anupper-middle class suburban couple, Dick and Jane Harper (Carrey and Leoni, respectively), who have an ambitiously upscalelifestyle and a six-year-old son who's so attached to the Latino housekeeperthat he speaks in an accented mix of Spanish and English and covetouslydeclares his love of "telemundo."
Dick works forbehemoth corporation Globodyne, and when he'spromoted to a vice president's post, Jane quits her job to spend more time athome. Dick is tabbed to go on television to tout the company's financialstanding, but it quickly becomes apparent that things are in a freefall - andhe's a fall guy.
On returning tohis office, Dick finds his an orgy of paper-shredding. The company, engaged inmarket-manipulating shell games to mask massive losses, goes bankrupt with asnap and CEO Jack McCallister (Alec Baldwin) escapesjust ahead of the indictments - but second-in-command Frank Bascombe(Richard Jenkins) isn't as lucky.
Dick initiallytakes all this for a momentary setback, but then discovers that in addition tohis pension and stock options being liquidated and worthless, the job market isflooded, property values have crashed and there are no commensurate positionsavailable.
Caught up a sinkholeof debt, the Harpers parcel off their high-end possessions and take to variousodd jobs (Dick at a bulk retail outlet, Jane teaching exercise classes andsuffering botox-testing) with limited success beforeDick, in a piquant fit of tweaked masculine rage, finally seizes upon criminalenterprise.
Jane firstaccompanies Dick not thinking he'll do anything ("Don't forget to kill thewitnesses," she mocks, as he slips into a convenience store with their son'swater gun), but upon finding out that they're about to be evicted from theirhome, she enthusiastically assists in this new life of crime.
After they arenearly caught, Dick and Jane have their consciences awakened and finally enlistthe aid of a drunken Bascombe in an effort to bringdown the oily McCallister.
The first 45minutes of the feature neatly delineate the Harpers' state of diminishingaffairs. It's here that the film enjoys some of its most colorful set pieces,as when Dick joins a group of Mexican migrant workers, only to lose his walletand get caught up in an immigration service sting.
The tonethroughout, in fact, is one of exaggerated comedy - from the crazed fervour of Globodyne's crash and McCallister's helicopter evacuation from the corporatepremises to a slapstick-driven, choreographed sequence in which Dick and fellowwhite-collar ex-employees lay siege to an office building in a mad dash for afinal interview slot. Dick and Jane's costume-driven crime sprees, too, duringwhich they dress as Sonny and Cher and indulge in voicebox-altering disguises, make for stylisedlaughs.
Though its comedyis broad, the film does still manage to make some pointed political swipes,most notably in a remote interview segment with McCallisterwhich directly apes President George W Bush's distractedly empatheticon-vacation comments, as seen in Fahrenheit9/11, about the Enron scandal that then culminate with him lining up a golfswing and saying, "Now watch this shot."
The filmconcludes, too, with an immediate credit-crawl thank you that drops the namesof executive officers from Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and other real-lifecorporations racked by scandal and rampant corruption.
Such touches,while not truly shocking when stacked up against the routines of any number ofmodern stand-up comedians, are surprisingly forward for a big-budget mainstreamHollywood movie - and perhaps part of the reason the film is being marketedwith an eye toward its broader, slapstick set pieces.
Carrey deliversan energetic lead performance, and Leoni likewiseagain proves herself a skilled comedienne.
While giving wideberth to his star (also a producer on the project) and his proclivity formulti-take improv, Parisot(Galaxy Quest) still locates andabets a consistent tone of downward spiraling desperation key to audience purchasein the film's narrative stakes. If some of the film's re-shoots are obvious innature, it's at least a case of more good than damage being done, as
Productioncompanies
Columbia Pictures
Imagine Entertainment
JC23 Entertainment
US distribution
Sony Pictures
Internationaldistribution
Sony PRI
Executiveproducers
Peter Bart
Max Palevsky
Jane Bartelme
Producers
Brian Grazer
Jim Carrey
Screenplay
Judd Apatow & Nicholas Stoller
based on a story by Gerald Gaiser and Judd Apatow & Nicholas Stoller
Cinematography
Jerzy Zielinski
Production design
Barry Robinson
Editor
Don Zimmerman
Music
Theodore Shapiro
Main cast
Jim Carrey
Tea Leoni
Alec Baldwin
Richard Jenkins
Angie Harmon
John Michael Higgins
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