Movie review: The Number 23

by John P. Meyer

As a long-time observer of the vagaries of its appearance - stemming from my enthusiastic consumption of the writings of the two weird Wilsons (Robert Anton, and - to a somewhat less significant degree - Colin) - it was with some astonishment that I learned (several months ago) that an actual MOVIE was going to be made about the seemingly far-above-average occurrence of this particular two-digit number in the course of everyday events. I'm referring, of course, to The Number 23.

It's such an obscure, harmless little predilection - one that I thought was confined to just a tiny group of fringe cognoscenti. (Like me. And my friends, all of whom I've shared it with at some point or another; and of course my wife, who now glances sideways at me whenever we end up with a ticket for seat D23, or are watching a TV show where the characters are handed the key to room 23; and of course I've shared it with my sister, nieces, nephews... wait a minute, this is starting to sound like some sort of friggin' VIRUS or something, perpetuating and replicating itself exponentially... and IT'S ALL MY FAULT!)

It's true: paranoia does strike deep.

Approaching a feature-length film devoted to this topic calls for a heavy dollop of skepticism. I mean, how does one stretch out an obsessional dead-end delusion for 95 minutes on the big screen? Also, I consider this one of those bad movie-titling decisions: it's not like we'd be likely to misunderstand that 23 refers to the number 23 - of course it does! If it referred to, say, the WORDS twenty-three, then they would have been spelled out. Like words. So why bother with the unnecessary verbiage? Think how much more effective the marketing campaign might have been if the movie had just been called 23. (Like 300. Powerful, right?) 23: BAM!

I mean, sitting in the theater writing down these thoughts it seemed pretty likely to me that there would be no titling conflicts involved; certainly a search of IMDB would not reveal another film called 23. Well... I was wrong.

Turns out that a German filmmaker by the name of Hans-Christian Schmid made a movie called 23 in 1998. And - holy crap! - listed in the acting credits is none other than Robert Anton Wilson, playing HIMSELF! (?) Man, I've got to get hold of a copy of that one: as far as I know, this would be R.A.W.'s only film appearance. (D'OH! - wrong again!) Plus, it's about West Germany in the 1980's! (Well... two out of three ain't bad, and if you place them together they make 23 - DOUBLE D'OH!)

Anyway, back to the Jim Carrey film, which should actually be referred to as a Joel Schumacher film (because he directed), but since Carrey carries probably 23 times the name recognition of Schumacher, we'll stick with "a Jim Carrey film" and I doubt Joel will mind.

On the surface, it's a story about predestination and the burgeoning accumulation of seemingly significant events in a process known as synchronicity. If you dig a bit deeper into the goofy philosophy behind such things, you end up at a place where the final argument relates to whether reality is something you perceive as opposed to something you create: you find what you expect to find; it's true if you believe it to be true.

If Schumacher and scripter Fernley Phillips had been going for otherworldly eeriness (like Mark Pellington's The Mothman Prophecies) or a real inkling of what all this quantum psychology stuff is about, they might have ended up with something truly offbeat and dreamy (like Aronofsky's cryptic The Fountain). Instead, they've used the whole 23 phenomenon (if such can be said to exist) as a springboard into the brim-full pool of traditional mystery/thrillers. Thereby - not coincidentally - making the film more appealing to mainstream audiences, who will not need to be particularly conversant in the obscure source material.

Carrey plays a mild-mannered animal control officer (i.e., "dog catcher") named Walter Sparrow - kind of a civil serving pedestrian version of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. He's married to a lovely baker of cakes named Agatha (Virginia Madsen), and in the person of son Robin (Logan Lerman) they have the start of their average 2.3 children. In other words: dullsville.

But things swerve screechingly into the territory of WTF? when Agatha innocently purchases a curious hand-bound novel (called - guess what? - The Number 23) from a local second-hand bookstore and presents it to Walter for his birthday. Kind of interesting, he thinks, upon reading the initial chapter: the narrator's early childhood resembles some aspects of his own.

Well, you can see where this is headed: the more Walter reads, the more autobiographical material he recognizes in the author's narrative. It's almost like the guy KNOWS him somehow.

There's been no question about JC's outstanding acting ability for some time, as demonstrated most recently in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and he bolsters his dramatic credentials with this performance. Both he and Ms. Madsen play dual roles in the film, acting out scenes from their novelized alternate reality as well as portraying their "real-time" characters.

Carrey's fictional alter ego is a self-indulgent, world-weary detective named Fingerling; Madsen's is a downright SMOKIN' femme fatale named Fabrizia, who enjoys a touch of the old "pretend you have a knife and you're slashing me with it" role-playing in the bedroom. (Or up against a the wall of an alley. Or wherever else they happen to be when the mood strikes.) "Death and sex: what a turn-on," comments Fingerling. When jealousy rears its hoary head, Carrey's Fingerling character surrenders to a homicidal madness that may be a foretaste of what's to come in his real life.

I wouldn't dream of giving away too much, but I will state this much for the record:

1) the movie suffers from a serious case of The Trites after the Big Revelation comes down, probably because it was conceived as a mainstream Hollywood thriller.

2) the Comics Code Authority may have been right (as their findings applied to pulp detective mags)

3) there is one bona-fide bad-ass bus driver in the town where the Sparrows reside, and he's not willing to alter his schedule for nuthin'.

DEEP THOUGHTS, TAKE ONE: "23 - it rules my world." - Suicide Blonde

DEEP THOUGHTS, TAKE TWO: "People only pray because they believe that God will help them if they do." - Professor Isaac French (author's note: Well, DUH!)

INTERNAL EVIDENCE THAT THIS WHOLE 23 THING IS A GENUINE PHENOMENON: The article you're reading is the 23rd one I have posted since Nominations announced for 2006 Oscars - which was posted on Jan. 23rd. Check it out if you think I'm fooling - and cue the Twilight Zone score.

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