Imagine, if you can, that you have a pretty decent job.
Sure, you have to dress in a suit everyday, but you get to drive to office in a BMW. Never mind the jerk next door showing off his Merc. Alright, so you get to work at the ambiguously named Globodyne, and hear news about a promotion. After 15 years of relative obscurity, you finally make vice president. Life is sunny, and, before you bite into your Eggs Florentine at the head honcho's, you're sufficiently on top of the world to advise your wife to quit her job. You can take care of things.
Only, as Dick (Jim Carrey) soon finds out, big companies often go belly-up without warning. Stocks plunge, and all your investments turn to dust in a matter of days. Before you know it, you're out of a job, and your former colleagues are either killing themselves or working at Burger King. Can you still handle it?
Dick tries. He is an enthusiastic nice guy, the kind who'll let others walk in front of him, a polite do-gooder. His wife, Jane (Téa Leoni) is a bit of a nag, and a downer at the best of times, but Dick gamely struggles through, trying to believe in an eventual silver lining. The mortgage beckons and the job interviews never fall short of abject humiliation. He is tired, and after their lawn is repossessed, decides enough is enough, picks up his son's water pistol, and turns to a life of crime.
I know what you're thinking. Repressed violence, social decay, fragile business structures, a slumping economy. Tons of material for a satire here. Absolutely, but director Dean Parisot (remember Galaxy Quest?) seems content to turn it into farce, making it a humorous story about a married couple doing something rather unlikely. But everyone ain't the Smiths.
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As the film goes from contrived slapstick situation to potentially interesting moment turning into contrived slapstick cliche, Jim Carrey manages to extract moments all his own.
With his lunatic brand of high-octane comic genius, he salvages a few bits of pure hilarity, times you laugh in spite of yourself. In hindsight, if this was purely a Jim Carrey solo vehicle, he might actually have pulled it off -- even if it would be called something as frightful as Fun With Dick.
However, it isn't. This film needs (at the very least) a snappy leading pair, with each outdoing the other at every step. The only interesting thing about Téa Leoni is her open-to-mispronunciation name, and the actress just can't keep up. The script requires her to occasionally pull a Meg Ryan or a Helen Hunt, but she can't manage much of anything as she tries too hard. She also comes across as a woman the new (and can-do) Dick might justifiably shoot in the head.
As mentioned, there are few moments of genuine fun in this obvious, Enron-lampooning film. One particular scene features Alec Baldwin (who seems to have perfected the persona of Worst Boss Ever in recent comedies) as former CEO of the now-dead Globodyne addressing the camera while on vacation hunting.
Paralleling George W Bush immortalised in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, he talks about how terrible the tragedy is and emphasises his concern -- seconds before (still on camera) turning around and trying to shoot down a duck. Nice.
But if Fun With Dick And Jane is trying to be clever, it isn't trying hard enough.
While we have several scenes of Carrey playing Elastic Man (he doesn't have much left to prove there) and falling over things, the jokes fall flatter, very heard-that. Stereotypes of every kind abound, and once the characters dress in Sonny & Cher drag, there's little that can be said in favour of the movie.
The original 1977 film -- of the same name, which starred George Segal and Jane Fonda -- is an obscure, less-watched film. But that doesn't justify this listless, uninspired remake.
Let's just hope Carrey got paid enough for Fun; there's not much else he can take away from it.
