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I sat with that fish-out-of-water feeling through the first two-thirds of “Fun With Dick and Jane.” That’s the section of the movie that is at the mercy of Jim Carrey’s rubber face and body. I can take that for only so long, and 60 minutes is about 55 minutes too much. Plus, he’s been coasting on that kind of shtick so long now, it’s become more pathetic than funny.

Carrey plays the Dick of the title. (Insert smart ass comment here.) He’s an upper middle management type who is unexpectedly promoted to VP in charge of communications just days before he has to go on TV to be blindsided by questions about his company’s collapse. He’s left holding the PR bag while the big boss (Alec Baldwin) absconds in his helicopter and the second in command, Frank (Richard Jenkins), gets pie-eyed.

Because of Dick’s new promotion, wife Jane (Tea Leoni) has quit her job. Now, with both of them out of work, life gets tough. They finally take to a life of petty crime, knocking over convenience stores and sushi bars before moving on to banks because they don’t want to lose their lounging-by-the-pool lifestyle. They meet Frank again, who is now under indictment, and concoct a scheme for stealing 400 million dollars from their larcenous, pension-raiding former boss.

I guess it’s okay that they’ve been stealing for comfort, too, even if on a smaller scale.

Beyond a lack of interest in Carrey’s Plastic Man shtick, I thought the film came perilously close to making fun of people who actually have to work for a living on the bottom rungs of the employment ladder. Illegal aliens from Mexico, discount store grunts, maids. You know—people with jobs we can all laugh at. I especially got the giggles while the illegals were onscreen, with their dark-skinned, smiling faces and their we-don’-need-no-steenkin-badges accents. Mucho laugho.

At the midway point, the farce began to morph into social commentary as Jane has to take a job instructing her former girlfriends at the gym, and Dick takes a position as a greeter at a discount store that operates suspiciously like Wal-Mart. It’s here that Leoni’s roll is increased, and in her quiet way she’s far funnier than Carrey’s ADHD antics.

Before the film ends, Dick and Jane have found a way to right all wrongs and, apparently, no one we’ve come to like has to go to prison. Dick is threatened with indictment—in fact, he makes a big deal of it—but then the subject is dropped. Frank is still free as well. This is one of those comedies that mentions something for a laugh and then forgets all about it. Some of this stuff can be funny, but nothing holds together very well.

You may or may not think that Dick, Jane, and Frank’s solution to the financial problems caused by the collapse of a huge corporation is ethical. I think that question is left unaddressed in its entirety in a populist and smug conclusion, but that may be because I don’t think such injustices can be set right so easily. Not that they can’t be fodder for comedy—but the comedy has to be more thoughtful and gutsy than this one is.

“Fun With Dick and Jane” has its moments but it’s not as smart as it thinks it is, or as it wants to be. Its heart may be in the right place, but its head is up its ass. Way up.

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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13663&reviewer=405
originally posted: 01/04/06 09:19:07
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