See Poffy Steal

Not exactly a "boring" movie - but Fun with Dick and Jane does not possess enough substance to squeeze out an entertaining review. Somebody wake me when this typing is done…

An upwardly-mobile family suddenly find themselves in a downwardly-spiraling tailspin. Both Dick Harper (Carrey) and his wife Jane (the simply stunning Téa Leoni) are out of work and so down on their luck that they turn to crime to pay the bills and retain their yuppie materialism.

We don't need more than one hand to count the "big" laughs in this remake of the 1977 film (which starred George Segal and Jane Fonda). Veteran television director, Dean Parisot, with writers Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller and Peter Tolan, move the film at a breakneck pace, which leaves no time to question the childish plot or examine the one-dimensionality of the characters, coaxing about as many nervous titters and strained giggles out of viewers as your average tv comedy would (more through giving the actors their due for "reaching" for gags that get away, than for actual humor).

And there lies the problem: this IS "your average TV comedy" writ large and tedious. Key word: average. Mediocre. Nice. Unexceptional. Okay. Beige. Vanilla.

To this point in his career, Jim Carrey has not insulted us with "average" in any of his diverse roles. Even the seemingly mundane The Majestic saw him produce some of his finest "straight" dramatic moments on film. In Dick and Jane he is floundering in a script written for a lesser comedian - maybe someone mid-beige, like his co-star from the devilishly wry The Cable Guy, Matthew Broderick, but not quite as American Ugly as a Rob Schneider or a Tom Arnold.

Carrey's talents are still potent, evidenced in snatches like the Hendrix air-guitar-voicebox scene, and a scene where he plays a puppet, while drunk (on half a beer), these scenes only highlighting his lack of anything to do in the rest of the movie. He even spoofs his own acting talents in a scene where he reaches such a level of desperation that tears well up in his eyes as he tries to exact reparations directly from his CEO at gunpoint. Not one minute after the intense moment, he is laughingly boasting to his wife, "Did you see how I made my eyes water?"

There are intimations that the recession that is hindering Dick and Jane finding gainful employment is a George W. Bush phenomenon. But the movie is not a Bush-bash - if you blink, you miss the allusion. There are grander issues at stake here - snide contradictions about morality and the ethics of crime.

For one brief moment, the characters contemplate prostitution as a means to get by. Of course, in a PG-13 film, the female character is required to act outraged at this suggestion - then she turns to burglary without a moment's hesitation! Correct me if I'm wrong, but burglary is as illegal as prostitution, as immoral as prostitution, and as demoralizing as prostitution. Like prostitution, it is a felony. Like prostitution, one would feel remorse after the act (providing one were a Good Christian - as these two desperadoes are painted to be). The same "Christians" in the viewing audience who would - like Jane - frown on prostitution, readily embrace burglary as a viable comedic lever. Yet, if Dick and Jane are set on the route of immorality - "immorality" as denoted by their society's strictures - they might as well have gone the way of prostitution as a means to an end, for with Jane being such a magma-hot tamale, she could have easily clocked thousands of dollars a day escorting high-class businessmen, thereby achieving the goal of Quick Cash more succinctly.

The movie tells us - snidely, of course - that dressing as a Blues Brother and robbing a bank, or stealing a car and driving it through a jewelry store window is less reprehensible and more moral than selling your body. But there is no distinction. Immoral is immoral - as you yourselves have decreed.

It also tells us that since the CEO was stealing money from his corporation, it is okay to steal the money back from him. Two wrongs DO make a right!

And are we to applaud Dick and Jane for being so attuned to each other's criminal proclivities? One would imagine that if a married couple were thrown into destitution and one partner were to suggest burglary as a way out, the other partner (if they harbored a shred of decency) would protest to the point of defection in the marriage - yet these two are as ideologically bereft as each other, actually enjoying themselves to the point of playing "dress-up" with such outlandishly flamboyant costumes, we not only question their pragmatism, we wonder at their apprehension of morals at all.

In this frenetic film, many other actors somehow also find nothing to do: Alec Baldwin (as Dick's CEO), Richard Jenkins (as Dick's supervisor-turned-bum), and Jeff Garlin (out from under the protective skirts of Larry David, as an Office Manager type).

A simple comedy for the simple-minded. See Dick? See Jane? No. See Carrey, see Leoni - but in something else.


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