It doesn't matter really, they are all as bad as each other.
Number 42: Son of the Mask (2005)
Ok, let’s get this over with.
In the mid-90’s, Jim Carrey ruled the comedy roost. Two Ace Ventura movies, Dumb and Dumber and The Mask.
All massive hits. The Mask in
particular was a massive success and as well as being a great vehicle for Jim
Carrey’s zaney madcap humour it also launched the career of Cameron Diaz.
Talks of a sequel were inevitable and done the rounds for
years. By the time Son of the Mask
was put into production, Carrey and Diaz had both long since moved on, trying
to get more serious roles. The only character from the original film in the
sequel is Dr. Neuman (Ben Stein), the expert on Norse mythology but he’s only
in the first few minutes. He knew to get out of there as quickly as possible.
The only thing Son of
the Mask has in common with the original is Dr Neuman and the mask itself.
Otherwise they look nothing alike. Just look at the world they live in. Stanley
Ipkiss from the first film lived in a city that looked like an actual city
where people lived. In this film, it’s like they live in Pee-Wee’s playhouse.
The story here is that Loki (Alan Cumming) is on Earth
looking for the mask. To be fair, this is actually a good bit of continuity
from the first film as Dr Neuman did say that it was Loki’s mask. That is the
only bit of praise this film will get and is more than it deserves. And poor
Loki would have to wait another six years before Tom Hiddleston would redeem
his reputation.
Loki has daddy issues as his father Odin is constantly
berating him as a failure.
The mask has found its way into the possession of a guy
called Tim (Jamie Kennedy), who wants to be an animator. His wife wants a baby
but he isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood.
He wears the mask to a work Halloween party and the
kookiness begins when we get an awful rendition of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off
You’. In a twist on the bad song = bad movie formula, we have a good song made
bad for a bad movie. The stupid rap and country segments, it’s only when you a
hear a song ruined so much you come to appreciate the original.
A quick word on how the Mask character looks as well. Jim
Carrey in the first movie looked perfect. He was crazy and off-the-wall but he
had that slightly sinister, dangerous edge to him as well. Here, he just looks
weird. He looks like a green skinned talk-show host. It is only when you watch
films like this you realise just how good Jim Carrey actually is.
Anyway, after the party the Mask runs home to to
his wife. If you are wondering what happens next, just look at the title of the
film.
So yeah, because he was wearing the mask at the time his
baby has the powers of the mask. Cue unfunny baby gags.
I think we’re supposed to like the baby but other than being
a baby there’s nothing good about him. And to be honest, I don’t think being a
baby is that great a thing anyway, it doesn’t impress me.
Everything about him is horrific. His mum goes away for a
week and he takes absolute pleasure in trying to drive his Dad absolutely
mental. He is a sadistic baby. The CGI done on his body does him no favours
either and will give you nightmares for weeks.
Loki kidnaps the baby, who is called Alvie, and gives Tim an
hour to bring his mask to him and he’ll give him his son back. But Loki finds
himself attached to the baby, who I guess you might argue is his son too. So we
get the showdown between Loki and Tim wearing the mask which is the
cartoon-fest you would expect it to be, so I guess in that way it doesn’t
disappoint. But it doesn’t please either.
After finding they are too evenly matched they leave it to
Alvie to decide who he wants to go with. Obviously he chooses Tim because the
reluctant father has found he does love his son after all. He uses this new
found knowledge to help Loki patch things up with his own father, Odin. If only
he was around in The Avengers movies,
all the problems could have been solved.
So, its happy endings all round.
To summarise what it’s like watching Son of Mask, well there’s a part where they show a bit of a Woody
Woodpecker cartoon and it cuts away and I was thinking ‘No!!! I want to watch
Woody Woodpecker! He’s a million times more entertaining than this film.’
There are no funny or clever jokes in this. It’s all just
awful.
On the plus side, Jim Carrey’s reputation has been enhanced
just by virtue of not appearing in this film.
Number 39: Glitter (2001)
Who doesn’t love Mariah Carey? Part human, part dolphin and
the woman the phrase ‘diva’ was invented for.
Honest truth is, I’m not sure who is a fan of Mariah Carey. I’ve never met one and I don’t know
anyone who has. Or at least, anyone who would admit to it but she must have
fans somewhere. Someone is buying her albums and going to her concerts.
Unless it’s all just a conspiracy and she doesn’t actually
have any fans at all. Those people who turn up at her concerts are just paid to
go in order to make it look like she is a popular and successful artist.
They conned the producers of this film good, $22,000,000 was
put into making this. That’s a fairly modest budget for a major Hollywood
production in truth but Glitter still didn’t
even come close to breaking even. Mariah was most definitely not on fire for
this one.
It was doomed from the start of course, much like Gigli in that a lot of people weren't going to like it however good or bad it was.
Mariah from the block plays a young woman called Billie who
has a great passion for arts and crafts. Not really, she’s a singer obviously.
After being discovered by a DJ-Producer in a Milli-Vanilli situation (she’s
been doing the vocals on another woman’s song), he buys her contract from
another dodgy producer and then gets her a major record deal.
The producer called Dice, is played by British actor Max
Beesley, putting on an American accent. I always hate it when actors do this
because it always sounds so obviously fake, think Jason Statham in The Transporter. Beesley starts off ok
but just gets worse as it goes on.
Billie goes through a meteoric rise to fame and has romance
with Dice. But all is not great at the top, as Billie has to deal with sleazy
producers while Dice has problems with the guy who he bought her contract from
but hasn’t paid for. I use the word ‘problems’ but they never feel like
challenges that need to be overcome, they just seem like things that are happening
around them.
There is a variation on the narrator theme, which isn’t as
common in films these days as it once was. In Glitter, there are snippets of Mariah Carey tracks to explain how a
character is feeling. Singing it doesn’t make it better.
I won’t give away the ending for all the mythical Mariah
Carey fans out there but I will say it might have meant a lot more if it was
given just a bit more than 2 minutes build up throughout the entirety of the
rest of the film.
How is Mariah Carey as an actress you ask? Put it like this,
at one point in the film her character meets a film producer who asks her ‘Have
you ever thought about acting?’ Well, this is about an hour in and she hasn’t
done any yet so I would say, no. She is surprisingly good at standing around
looking gormless though. I think she’s trying to convey emotion bless her, but
it’s been so long since she had one she probably doesn’t know what one is.
Mariah Carey is a very talented singer to be fair to her but
an actress she most certainly is not.
She won a Razzie for Worst Actress by the way.
To cement the legacy of this film (which was Carey’s concept
as well) the sales of the soundtrack were so poor, EMI decided they couldn’t
keep up the pretence Mariah Carey was popular anymore and she was dropped from
the label.
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