Has anyone seen this yet? The two sources I usually use as a rough guide to picking movies are giving me wildly different readings: it’s 08% fresh at RottenTomatoes, but has a 7.4 user rating at IMDB. I know IMDB ratings are usually inflated at first, but still, 7.4 is pretty good, even for early on. I really like paranoid thrillers, so I was hoping this would be good, but then I hate wasting time and money on horrible movies. Any Doper opinions out there?
This is thread number 409,827. Your member number is 55,032. 409,827 / 55,032 is 7.4 – the exact rating that this movie got on IMDB! Coincidence?! I think not.
Furthermore, 8% of 409,827 is roughly 32,786. And 8% of 55,032 is roughly 4,402.
32,786 divided by 4,402 is…
7.4!
Conclusion: See this probably terrible movie. But not on your birthday. (Is it July 4th? I hope not. Because if it is you’re totally dead.)
I saw this last night. It was decent. Not great, but worth the $11. It has all of the paranoid cliches you come to expect from this type of mystery/thriller. The first half of the movie is actually very engrossing. The visual style and the eerie exposition told through the lines of the book are really well done. The latter half of the movie loses that interesting stylized tone and reverts to the typical dark murder mystery look and feel. I suppose this isn’t all bad, but I felt like it started strong and finished weakly. The fact that the end has some real clumsy lines of dialog didn’t help much.
Jim Carrey was pretty good, sorta pulling from the same place as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind role he played.
One strange thing was how many moments in the movie had the entire theater laughing out loud. There were a few that were obviously intentional, trying to capitalize on Carrey’s ability to use his facial expressions. However, there were several that didn’t seem to be intentional. There were some shots that just came across as goofy, like something you’d expect from a goofball satire movie by the Zucker brothers. In a way it worked, breaking up what could have felt heavy handed and monotonous, but the fact that you were laughing at what was presumably supposed to be a really jarring and dramatic scene felt odd.
All in all it was enjoyable. It didn’t revolutionize the genre or anything and it doesn’t have a especially compelling ending. You probably won’t be hearing any Oscar talk, but if you go in looking to enjoy yourself I think you will.
This is the reason I don’t want to see it, although I love the gendre. I think Carrey’s weird face would be too distracting. I avoid seeing his comedies because he’s so ‘over the top’. But without the comedic behavior, there’s not alot left except that face.
The only thing I thought when I first saw the ad for “The Number 23” is “Robert Anton Wilson must be smiling in the Afterlife right now.”
Next year, the sequel- “Fnord”.
Here’s a pretty funny parody trailer of the movie:
Here’s an even stupider parody.
“I have glasses, goddammit, I HAVE GLASSES!”
Heh heh heh.
“Jesus had twelve desciples and two arms!!!” 
I concede that one’s stupider.
Sinjin
I finally saw this tonight (hey, I missed the showtime for “Breach” and it was between this and “Norbit”). What a…weird, stupid, funny movie. I was prepared for all sorts of “whoa, 23 is everywhere!” kinds of inanity, but I wasn’t prepared for:
[SPOILER]Ned, the “Guardian of the Dead” dog, and Walter’s showdown with him.
Skeleton robbing wives.
“Here’s how we’ll catch the murderer – let’s send 23 HUGE boxes full of styrofoam to this PO Box, and jump whoever picks them up!” What, a letter wouldn’t have sufficed?
The wife finding that Walter has written things like “KILL HER” on his arm after he’s read, what, five chapters of the book? Not a good sign.
The son, “Robin Sparrow,” who couldn’t be more than 12 years old by my calculations, but is a “player” with the ladies, and has posters of Charles Darwin in his bedroom.
The “Guy Noir”-esque parody of the Fingerling scenes:
Suicide Blonde: “My favorite color is pink, and you know what pink is? Red and white add up to 92, pink is 4, 92 divided by 4 is 23!!!”
Fingerling: I’ll be honest. I didn’t get it.
“Fingerling,” period.
The fact that they never gave any real significance to 23. It was just a device to hang the paranoia on! I thought for sure it would have some actual significance – the key to unlocking a big government conspiracy, or the apocalpse, or the coming of the anti-Christ (2/3 = .666) or something. But no – it’s just a number that some people get obsessed with that somehow ruins their lives.
“Your maiden name is Pink…youuuuu wrote the book!” Not once before that moment did Walter stop and recognize that his wife’s maiden name was Pink? What kind of a last name is “Pink” anyways?
The idea that Walter could walk out of a mental hospital after a long rehabilitation, bump into his future wife a second later, remember the meeting, but neither of them would remember or question the fact that he’d just been checked out of a mental hospital and try to figure out why he was there!
The idea that in his mad dash of writing the book, Walter carefully rigged it so that the 23rd word of every 23rd page would give clues to the location of the body.
The idea that after his girlfriend gets murdered, Walter locks himself up in a hotel room, trashes the place with insane graffiti, writes a confessional, and throws himself out the window, but the authorities just shrug it off as harmless insanity and don’t arrest him for the crime![/SPOILER]
And on and on. This movie practically MST3K’s itself. I’d actually recommend it to Dopers with a certain sense of humor – if you like MST3K, you’ll probably find it hilarious – I was laughing through half the movie. It’s weird and the premise is stupid, but it’s funny and seldom boring.