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Techtite's DVD Reviews! |
"Kids will like the special effects as long as they can hear the sounds above mom and dad's snoring." --from the review ------------- Sidebar :: ------------- Read Up; There's a Quiz Later. People interested in the history of the original comic book series can check out sites like the Wikipedia, here, for a full summary of all the issues ever printed of this short-run comic. In case you needed me to tell you let me be clear. Reading this one page article is a whole lot more fun that this sequel could be. ...
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Son of the Mask
Click picture to order this DVD A Guest Review by "Bill Bored"The Film: Where's Stanley Ipkiss...? I admit Jim Carrey has become too big of a celebrity to return to the campy comedy that made him a star...but what happened to his character? Well, in the original Dark Horse Comics, Stanley was actually just the first of three to obtain the mask. In this formula we must then assume that this film is a continuation of this story, with another (fourth?) person obtaining "The Mask." In other words: the problems with this sequel are not continuity. The problem is that Son of the Mask simply stinks. Yes I'll admit it. The original film was silly. Yet in that silliness was sensibility. There was the believable concept that Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) was not becoming some Mister Hyde to his Dr. Jekyll. The mask was simply taking all his repressed emotions and bringing them to the surface. It made sense that a repressed romantic with a love for cartoons would suddenly become a playful lothario. It was funny because as crazy as the special effects were it made sense. That's half of this film's problems: there is no sense at all. What little sense there is isn't exciting. Everyone has inner hopes and dreams and fears, yet new mask owner Tim Avery (Jaime Kennedy) wants little more than to wear the mask to deliver good ad campaigns at his job. How boring can a nerd be? Oh yeah he also apparently wants a child very badly, which he conceives while wearing the mask. This leads to the title's Son of the Mask, though if that were taken literally one may wonder why the baby would not be green. Yet this is not a story made for continuity. It is simply a case of the FX team designing a totally artificial baby and trying to see what they could make the baby do. This brings me to the second problem. Said Son of the Mask isn't very realistic. This is not an unfair gripe. I've seen realistic looking computer generated characters in films many times. I've seen that hilarious ancient squirrel in Ice Age. I especially loved that elephant in George of the Jungle who fetched trees like sticks. I guess what I'm getting at is that even when a computer character does something silly, at least the character looks real. This baby, when not performed by an actual baby, is not very real. What's more, he's not very funny. In short the whole point of this sequel isn't interesting. A barrel of side plots do less to lengthen the movie and more to simply dilute any sensibility. Loki (Alan Cumming) is the original, ancient owner of the Mask. He wants it back but why he only now discovered it missing is never explained. This mask has been missing for many millennia and only now has he found its location? That makes very little sense. Even less credible is Otis the Dog, who has some barely explicable quest to attack the baby. In turn the baby wants to attack the little dog. Yes I know this film was made by the same folks who made Cats and Dogs. Yet that film had cats fighting dogs. Those animal species have been enemies for many centuries so it makes sense to make a comedy about it. This is different: dogs fighting little babies is not very funny. In fact; for all the attempt this film makes at being a live action cartoon, consider how many cartoons have a baby being attacked by a dog. The fact there are none should've really told the script writers something. As a final thought, I'd like to mention one scene in particular. There's always that one scene in a film that defines all reviews. For this theatrical misstep that would be the dancing baby scene. The joke is how the baby dances like the singing frog in that classic Warner Brothers cartoon by Chuck Jones. The scene may sound funny in print but trust me when I tell you it isn't. I'm the biggest Warner Brothers cartoon fan you can find and this scene was simply embarrassing. It is less of a testament of what animators can do as opposed to what they should never do.
The DVD:
Extras as listed for the release of Son of the Mask:
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