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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Bridge To Terabithia
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by rick grant
rickgrant01@comcast.net
B Rated R 95 min
In one of his most daring dramatic roles, Jim Carrey stars as Walter Sparrow/Fingering, an animal control officer who becomes obsessed with a book The Number 23, that he believes is telling the story of his life. Virginia Madsen portrays Walter’s loving wife Agatha/Fabrizia who has to contend with her husband as he comes unglued reading this strange book.
Although for the most part, Carrey gets inside his character’s head, he struggles to contain his comedic side. This schizoid acting style confuses his fans, who are befuddled by Carrey’s mocking tone. Still, the film comes off as dark and foreboding with Carrey’s character, Walter vacillating between his real life and his fantasy life of the book’s protagonist, Fingering.
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As Walter reads the book, he becomes Fingering, who is obsessed with numerology and manic writing. As Walter sinks deeper into schizophrenia, his paranoia deepens and he is convinced the number 23 is out to get him. The more he reads the more he becomes Fingering, the detective character in the book.
Accepting Carrey in this role is paramount to getting into the picture’s murky premise. In accepting this role, Carrey endeavored to stretch his acting beyond his goofy Pet Detective shtick. Pundits (me included) admire Carrey for taking difficult and daring roles. However, he probably wasn’t the right actor for this role but he brings his edgy comedic side into it, which in many ways, makes the character more interesting.
Clearly, Walter is bored with being an animal control officer and the book gives him an opportunity to develop a fantasy world, far more interesting than his work-a-day duties. But, Walter crosses over from reality to actually living in his fantasy world of Fingering as his mental state degenerates. He visits the places in the book and discovers evidence that the events and characters in the book were real. Yeah, Walter is nuts, but as he investigates the times and places of the book, the scenario becomes a mystery/detective story.
Of course, toward the end there is a Big Twist, which ties all the loose ends together. But it’s fun getting there and watching for the number 23 to pop up in many different forms and formulas. Ciphers and numbers yield 23. But what does it mean? That is the hook of the premise. Walter is feeding his paranoia by obsessing on the numerology of 23, as he loses all reason. Poor Agatha, she is the most tolerant wife in history. She tries to help Walter with his detective work only to get involved with the disturbing aspects of delving into the number 23.
The problem with Fernley Phillip’s script is the implausibility of Walter’s wife and son Robin’s abilities to put up with Walter’s lunacy. Madsen’s character Agatha is much too eager to go along with hubby’s contention that the number 23 is destroying his life, and the book was actually written about him. In real life, Walter’s wife would be long gone from this lunatic bin. Agatha even becomes her husband’s assistant as he goes mad as a Hatter.
Carrey hams it up doing his impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining as his entire psyche is taken over by Fingering. Walter as Fingering sees his wife Agatha as the book’s floozy Fabrizia, also played by Madsen. Director Joel Schumacher created a mosaic in which to place his characters and his orchestration of the scenes is impeccable. Reining in Carrey’s overacting was his main problem, which he doesn’t quite succeed in containing.
Ah, yes, the number 23 is driving Walter stark raving mad and his wife is morphing into the S&M loving Fabrizia. Yeah, maybe the characters in the book are much more exciting than Walter’s dull life as a dog catcher. Viewers can understand why he would prefer living Fingerling’s life to Walter’s working stiff existence.
Viewers who are perplexed by this story should not worry. The Big Twist answers all questions. That darn 23 is persistent in catching the viewers attention. By various equations any number combination can end up as 23. It’s a fun game like the Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon game. Do enough computations and you’ll end up with 23. It’s uncanny! However, what does it mean? Let’s see if I add my birthday and multiply by the square root of 66 divided by Pi, I get 23. Oh, I know it means something.
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