Review

Review Date: 26-December-05
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)

With the advent of winter everyone is hacking and coughing and blowing their noses, so it's an appropriate time for the release of "Fun With Dick and Jane." This remake feels like nothing so much as a cinematic sneeze, a casual outburst of ill humor and malaise which everybody can relate to but no one will ever remember.

Although it derives from a 1977 comedy of the same name, "Fun With Dick and Jane" is a pointedly contemporary tale. Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni star as the Harpers, a happily married couple who believes that their ship has come in after Dick is promoted to vice president of a large, techie-sounding company. Their bubble soon bursts as the company goes bust and its CEO (Alec Baldwin) leaves his employees in the lurch while retreating to his million-dollar mansion (or one of his million-dollar mansions). When flush the Harpers are bland at best, but they become rather interesting when reduced to no income and little savings. The middle of the picture works up a sincere spirit of desperation that combines drollery with a fear familiar to most Americans. Security and contentment almost always seem out of reach, and while we may not all have wallowed in the pit of an unrealized hot tub as the Harpers do, most of us know what it's like to feel disadvantaged. This is the meat of the movie: how Dick and Jane cling to their ideals, their dreams, and each other as their property and dignity disappear, until finally they hit rock bottom.

The only way out of their predicament is robbery, so they start with convenience stores and work their way up to banks. (Dick wields a realistic-looking squirt gun throughout, since his humanity remains intact. You know, Carrey excels at playing likable schmoes even in throwaways like this.) Where their descent into crime amuses, their scramble out of the hole merely fills up minutes until the inevitable end. The finale teams Dick and Jane with a repentant corporate shark (Richard Jenkins) for a lame sting against the Baldwin character, who, by the way, is Texan like a certain politician we know. He's meant to bring up angry memories of Enron and other money-grubbing, citizen-raping corporations, and it's possible that Jenkins' character is meant to represent the more common and confused modern man. (He shares the name of the hero from Richard Ford's novels The Sportswriter and Independence Day; IMDb doesn't list any such character in the 1977 film.) In any case, the denouement of "Fun With Dick and Jane" is a fainthearted wrap-up that adheres less to the heart of the story and more to the cheerful demands of the holiday season. The movie reaches its peak when expressing frustration but doesn't convincingly convey the belief (relief) that well-meaning folks can attain the brass ring.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.