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In this updated remake of the 1977 Jane Fonda-George Segal comedy, Jim Carrey stars as Dick Harper, an upwardly-mobile corporate suit whose company collapses in an Enron-like scandal that leaves its employees penniless after the sleazo CEO (Alec Baldwin) loots the pension fund for over $400 million. At first, Dick, who wound up being the public face of the disaster when he was sent on live television to assure stockholders that all was well, assumes that he and his family can simply ride out this minor glitch on their savings until he lands another high-powered job. He quickly discovers that those jobs are few and far between and when he actually does land an interview, it is with people who are less interested in hiring him than they are in meeting the guy who had a meltdown on national television. (This is a scene that was done with far funnier results in “Jersey Girl”) After struggling to make ends meet as a mega-mart greeter and as a migrant worker (where he winds up getting deported–ho hp!), Dick and wife Jane (Tea Leoni) stumble into a life of crime–robbing restaurants, head shops and people who have wronged them–in order to restore themselves to financial solvency. After a close call, they decide to pull off one last scam against the CEO whose antics ruined them in the first place.

The original film wasn’t an especially good comedy by any means but it had some points of interest–it was an early attempt by star-producer Fonda to create light entertainment that still gave voice to contemporary social concerns–and some nice chemistry between Fonda and Segal. None of those elements are on display this time around–this is nothing more than a loud, strident and borderline offensive farce that buries whatever social commentary it might have wanted to convey under the weight of pratfalls, wacky make-up effects and elaborate heist scenes that are neither exciting nor amusing. When it does try to deliver social commentary, it is with such ham-fisted condescension that even Michael Moore might find himself turned off by it.

Having proven over and over again that he can turn in a performance as subtle and accomplished as anyone else out there, the sight of Carrey stepping backwards to do some of his increasingly forced schtick is depressing. For virtually no reason, he does scenes in which he plays with a voice changer (endlessly), pretends to be a puppet (endlessly) and sings along with a song playing in the elevator in a ridiculously overstated manner (again, endlessly). He goes through the motions but there is no life to it and he seems to be as bored doing it as we are in watching him do it. (He looks like a elderly comedian on a talk show goaded by the host into telling his famous old joke for the billionth time and is unable to escape.) Even worse, considering that this is supposed to be a romantic comedy, at least in theory, he displays virtually no on-screen rapport with Leoni, whose performance is annoying enough to make a generally unwatchable film completely unwatchable whenever she appears.. (Frankly, Ralph Nader, who makes a brief cameo, scores more laughs in his appearance than the two of them combined.)

Even though it clocks in at a relatively brief 90 minutes, “Fun with Dick and Jane” is as excruciating to watch as it is depressing to contemplate afterwards. This is smug and condescending filmmaking at its worst and its tirades against greed and wastefulness ring especially hollow when they are asking audiences to pay $10 a head for a film without a single funny joke to speak of.

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originally posted: 12/21/05 16:33:49
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