Fun with Dick and Jane
By: Lindsay Bianchi | Category: Film Reviews | 01/07/06 | 12:24 PM
 |  |  Grade: C+ | Genre: Comedy
Summary: If you aren't up to your eyeballs in hock and want to have a pleasant, no-brainer evening out with your spouse or significant other, then go see Fun With Dick and Jane. If, on the other hand, your house is being repossessed next week, maybe you should opt for a quick rental from your local video outlet.
In this remake of the 1977 comedy starring George Segal and Jane Fonda, Jim Carrey and Tea Leone try to update Watergate era financial woes with "W" era overspending. Things follow the same basic path as in the original (that in itself being a sad comment on the present day), but somewhere near the end of it all, the new version wimps out and fails to make a stand. It's not that Segal and Fonda's comic romp is a harder hitting satire, it's just that the bad guy, Ed McMahon (of all people!) at least gets his just desserts. |
Alec Baldwin steps into McMahon's spot with appropriate sleaze for this fabricated world, and when he is exposed for the greedy jerk that he is, his punishment is dealing with the Paparazzi who have been told he is some kind of philanthropist! Huh? What's the message this movie is trying to send; anyway...greed is bad unless you manage to wiggle out of it at the last minute? I don't think the makers of this film quite know the answer to that question either. Perhaps the test audiences blanched at seeing big business getting it's butt kicked without some sort of reparation. Who knows?
 | | | Fun with Dick and Jane | | Starring: Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins & Angie Harmon | | Director: Dean Parisot |
| | View the Trailer (Quicktime) |
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As for the rest of the film, Carrey falls back into his spastic Jerry Lewis-like characterizations and flails around in every other scene. His comedy touches are genuinely clever proving that he still has the ability to crack people up with his antics. Many of the gags seem edited down to make room for the story, leaving us wanting more funny stuff and less exposition. One bit with the desperate couple dressed as Sonny and Cher could have been fleshed out for some real belly laughs. This is the kind of thing you will probably get as a reward for being a good consumer when purchasing the DVD containing all the outtakes and deleted scenes. There are a few laughs here, none of them that big, but the last laugh is on the audience for thinking this retread would venture into new territory without all the old baggage.
The best material comes at the beginning where the current climate of the go-getter businessman is lampooned as a kind of shark pit with pratfalls. Everyone, that is "everyman," is out to do whatever it takes to reach the next level, the next floor in the skyscraper of life. One of the funnier running gags is when Carrey's fellow worker and buddy keeps getting beat to the punch. Each time he fails, he hollers off camera the same expletive, "Son-of-a-bitch!" That's about as hilarious as this script gets. The rest is left up to Carrey and Leoni.
They have some good chemistry together as a he/she comic duo (I would like to see them in another funnier vehicle after this). Leoni can at least keep up with Carrey's bizarre behavior while managing to be cute and charming all the while. Her attempt to make a few measly bucks for the family as a Botox lab rat practically forces her into rubber face goofiness right along side Carrey. The comic touches are light throughout. It gets the job done, but the job could have been a lot funnier with more thought and planning.
This is almost a boardroom movie, a comedy picked from the dry carcass of a 70's dinosaur that probably sounded great to those in charge. However it takes more than a big name to make big laughs. If it's not funny when you read it, it's probably not going to be that funny when you film it. Even the original didn't exactly engender side aches. This should have been a much blacker comedy what with the way things have changed in the past twenty-odd years. More Enron-bashing, more Gordon Gekko-isms, more everything, just like the real world. There is subtlety here where there should be savagery. We live in the cynical age of smart-asses. I'm sure some of the rude comments from the people who had to sit through this were better than what was being said up on the screen.
One of the only other highlights is Richard Jenkins turn as a no-good executive who resorts to the bottle for comfort when Globodyne, the corporation in question, goes under. His Foster Brooks-like behavior nearly upstages both Carrey and Leone. As the father on Six Feet Under, he played his role with macabre gusto and just a touch of humanity. Here he lets out the comic beast. Once again, I await a further sampling of his comedic abilities.
If you aren't up to your eyeballs in hock and want to have a pleasant, no-brainer evening out with your spouse or significant other, then go see Fun With Dick and Jane. If, on the other hand, your house is being repossessed next week, maybe you should opt for a quick rental from your local video outlet. It's only fun to amuse yourself at other people's misfortune when you have none of your own.
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