i like james carrey and i wanted to see if he could do a movie other comedy. this movie didn’t prove that he could. the plot was hard to follow. i was paying attention. it flashed back but it still didn’t explain certain things. the ending didn’t make up for the whole movie.

I agree with witchazel—this movie was hardly bearable until the conclusion. It’s unfortunate that all but the last 15 minutes were so laborious to get through.

I actually could not bear to sit through the whole thing. Jesus. WHo made this? Why? How do films like this get funding and a major film star to agree to them?

The only reason why I didn’t label this “Not Worth Consuming” is the ending, which was sufficiently satisfying. But other than that, the plot was just too contrived for my taste. Everybody wants to write a script with a clever twist, but it just seems to me that this writer was trying too hard to be intelligent/sophisticated.

what the hell did i just watch?

I think previews are ruining movies for people lately. Instead of being representative of the real feel, tone, and plot, the push is just to “get people in the seats the first week.”

The preview (that I saw after the movie) made it look like a horror movie when really it’s more of a mystery.

The movie was a bit far fetched in places, but overall I would say it was enjoyable. It was a bit of a different take on a not completely originial story line.

And I thought the last five minutes were excellent as an ending.

The Number 23 isn’t unwatchable by any means, but its particular brand of awfulness deserves a little explanation. Directed by affable hack Joel Schumacher, the movie is part of what I’d call the post-Memento film, featuring unreliable narrators, plots that twist upon each other, suitably grimy production design that screams “I must be insane because I wrote all over the walls,” and the pleasures of the readerly text. Its saving grace is that it doesn’t constantly tease you—“constantly” being the operative term here—with “Was that real, or did he just dream that?” At least the whole thing is wrapped up neatly with a bow at the end, which is the least one can demand after having to sit through this.

Tonally, the film is all wrong, too. The pulpy novel that propels Walter Sparrow, Pet Detective, into his Downward Spiral Into Madness is meant to be badly-written hardboiled dialogue—actually, most of it is badly written period—but Schumacher seems to take it fairly seriously. Instead we get Jim Carrey doing his best brooding Colin Farrell impersonation; it’s a problem when the audience isn’t sure whether to interpret this as camp. (To his credit, the writer makes Carrey’s character a dog catcher; this can only be deliberate, considering one of Carrey’s most famous roles, but some sequences—particularly when Sparrow is pursued by the Hound of Heaven—are inadvertently funny.)

In short, the best thing about the movie is Virginia Madsen’s cheekbones, and they’re not reason enough to watch it.

(And to Mr. Schumacher: when your oeuvre contains the infamous “Fi’ cent” scene from Falling Down, it’s not very cool to start with an elaborate, unfunny joke that ends with the punchline “In China, people eat dogs.”)