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"It may not seem sensible to root for scoundrels, but it's always funny. Too bad these scoundrels are only semi- scoundrels." --from the review ------------- Sidebar :: ------------- No sidebar comments for this review. Yet... ...
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Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)
Click picture to order this DVD A Review by Techtite
Seen the movie? Jump to The DVD Extras. The film: It's one of those ironies of Hollywood that most remakes are best viewed with no memories of the prior film. By all accounts, Fun With Dick and Jane (the remake) is a tolerable comedy, with admitted laughs. Yet when you look at the original movie, and then consider how superior a comedy this could've been, well...it's hard to not feel disappointed. It's not that I'm disappointed here, at least not entirely, but man; what a missed opportunity this one was. It's not even like the original movie's plot was too hard to duplicate. See Dick. See Jane. See Dick and Jane live the good life. See Dick lose his job. See Dick and Jane fail at numerous odd "little" jobs (with hilarious slapstick results). See Jane survive a bank heist, albeit with some of the robbers' fallen money tucked in her purse when nobody was watching. See Dick decide, hmm; maybe crime does pay (maybe). See Dick and Jane perform various harebrained, cartoon style, slapstick robberies. This all leads to "the perfect crime" against...Dick's ex boss. What happens? I won't say. If you don't know, I emplore you to rent the original Fun With Dick and Jane. Do it now. It's a classic! I'm not kidding you here. I think the problem with this remake is that it's done in a era of Hollywood preferring to not "remake" as much as "re-imagine" a film. The whole thing goes like this: remake a film, but not really, crossing out this and adding that until in the end the film is more "your" film than "theirs." The trouble with this concept is how much it alienates your core audience. What we wanted was the original story, as performed by the rubber-faced master of slapstick, Jim Carrey, and the adorable comedienne Tea Leoni. Was that too much to ask? Apparently...yes. So jumping ahead...what happened? The biggest problem is how the script writers add little pieces of plot lunacy into the script, all for "big jokes" later in the film. Only these aren't "big" jokes as much as big disappointments. You may ask why this movie is set in "2000." That's for a final, six-year-old joke that is supposed to leave you with a laugh, yet more likely just makes you groan. Then there's how Dick and Jane have a maid who speaks Spanish. Why would two penniless people have a maid so stupid, she actually works for free? Well, they need her for a joke, because thanks to her...their son speaks Spanish more than English. I don't know why someone felt a kid who speaks Spanish is "funny," but like a bad David Letterman joke that keeps going ang going and going, (Uma! Oprah!), they keep showing this kid's Spanish speaking exploits, and it just isn't funny. If anything this kid was just annoying. When Dick and Jane need to sell the television to pay the bills, it's supposed to be oh so funny that their son is chasing the car insisting "Yo quiero mi telemundo!" How do you say "Go play in the traffic" in Spanish? Now that would be comedy. To make matters worse, they made the whole "life of crime" plot element totally "P.C." I'm all for political correctness but isn't the whole point that these two schmucks resort to a life of slapstick-ridden, poorly executed crimes? Tell that to the makers of this movie, especially when I tell you that the "gun" Dick uses throughout the movie is a squirt gun. So basically everyone these nimrods "rob" is a village idiot who can't tell the difference between a plastic gun and a metal one. Not too thrilling. Nor is it thrilling when I tell you, spoilers notwithstanding, that the "big caper" that ends the story is nothing more than Dick and Jane switching bank records when nobody's watching. Excuse me? Is this what counts as "the perfect crime" these days: a stupid paperwork boo-boo...? So, all that having been said, where does the remake go right? Well for one we have Dick played by Jim Carrey. The rubber faced Carrey is no George Segal, but when slapstick comes his way, he's the master. Kudos must also go to Tea Leoni as Jane. I guess this is where I'm supposed to say that Tea is no Jane Fonda but with all due respects this isn't a bad thing here. Jane wasn't the best person for slapstick, and when placed next to Jim Carrey, Tea holds her own. That's not easy. Yet in the end it all comes down to laughs. This heist story is no heist, at least not to me. This admittedly comes from a film critic who loves modern comedy capers like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and always wonders why more such "macabre comedy" isn't made available. When they said they were making a remake of Dick and Jane I was thrilled. When they told me Dick and Jane were played by Carrey and Leoni, I was ecstatic. The final result wasn't terribly bad. It's just disappointing. The DVD: I guess it's no surprise that a movie that could've been so-much-more would lead to a DVD that could've been so-much-more. Hey, look at the bright side! There are alternate English and French tracks, Some film trailers, and...and... Sarcasm aside; there is some stuff here. There's an Outtake reel, mostly of Jim Carrey goofing off on set. There's deleted scenes, but you can imagine how funny these scenes are if they were deleted from a film which sorry to say, needed added humor pretty badly. Then there's a reel of the publicity campaign for the film, where Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni are interviewed to publicize the film, and they're seemingly having a ball. Sure; they aren't having a "ball" now, but back then, they were. But if they were having genuine fun, where's the audio commentary from Jim and Tea? Anyone? Bueller...? That's the problem with bad films: 99% of the time, as soon as a film is ill received, the lead cast leaves skid marks. So don't expect Jim or Tea to offer any audio commentaries here, nor any major contribution to "new" DVD bonus features. How cool would an audio commentary have been, with Jim Carrey in it? Well, wonder about that for awhile friends, because it is not here. Instead, we have commentary by Director Dean Parisot, and Screenwriters Judd Apatow and Nicholas Stoller. Two guesses how much they confess the mistakes they all made. What Went Wrong here? Well, I guess that will have to wait for a What Went Wrong column, because it isn't answered here. This is to be expected with a remake that needn't ever been made if they weren't going to at least be as funny as the original. Man, what a riot this could have been, huh? It wasn't, though, so aside from a casual rental to see how "okay" this film truly was, I cannot totally recommend it.
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