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Number 23, The

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 68 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Mystery | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Fernley Phillips
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Release Date:
Theatrical: February 23, 2007
DVD: July 24, 2007
Running Time: 95 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence, disturbing images, sexuality and language
Starring Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Rhona Mitra, Michelle Arthur, and Mark Pellegrino
Animal control officer Walter Sparrow (Carrey) has found a book he doesn't dare put down. By reading a mysterious novel, "The Number 23," given to him as a birthday gift by his wife, Walter twists his once placid existence into an inferno of psychological torture that could possibly lead him to his death and the deaths of his loved ones. And all because of a number: The Number 23. (New Line Cinema)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: 8MM A Time to Kill Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera Bad Company Batman & Robin Batman Forever Falling Down Flawless Phone Booth Tigerland Veronica Guerin
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The movie looks terrific, and though it always keeps moving, it never feels headlong or rushed. This is a very good movie that could have been better still: Alas, the denouement is just a little off.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The film's assaultive shock editing holds you, and so does its mystery, which is like "The Da Vinci Code" with insanity and violence in place of highbrow signifiers.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
The movie wouldn't work if it were jokey, but there is a hint of wit - a wink to absurdity - that saves it from being laughable.
Read Full Review >Empire Simon Crook
What starts out as "Ace Ventura": Hex Detective mutates into a snaking noir with much paranoid numerologising as '23' pops up everywhere. The who-wrote-it revelation folds under scrutiny but it's fun getting there, Schumacher revisiting the brash stylistic tics of his '80s hit "Flatliners" with mucho gusto.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The movie's premise, while not brilliant, is solid and could have been used to develop an edge-of-the-seat thriller with a genuine surprise or two. As it exists, however, The Number 23 feels perfunctory and is developed in such a way that few people are likely to leave the theater satisfied.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Squanders a promising premise and a lot of cool special effects on a story that gets more ridiculous and less involving with each passing minute.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
You may have only 23 seconds to check out this review, so I'll sum things up quickly: This is another clever concept that sustains itself for about half a movie, then falls apart embarrassingly.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The premise of this first script by young Brit Fernley Phillips is so patently absurd that it would take an actor of far greater restraint than Carrey to get all the way through with a straight face.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
What kills "23" are any number of bad choices that render the movie tone-deaf, sometimes hilariously so.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
To combine the daftness of a baggy-pants clown and the deftness of a classic leading man remains Carrey's great unfulfilled promise. The sole glimmer of hope in The Number 23 is that he hints he'll still make good on it -- just not yet, and not here.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Schlock can be fun, just not here. "23" is like spending more than 90 minutes watching somebody else complete a Sudoku puzzle. I know what you're thinking: No Sudoku puzzle should take more than 90 minutes!
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
I'm not much of a math student, but I can tell you what The Number 23 all adds up to: nothing.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The tricky mathematical puzzles never add up, and the pulpy Raymond Chandler pastiches are more parody than potent.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Here, responding to an exceedingly convoluted screenplay with a relatively straight face, Schumacher does no one any favors, least of all his stars.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The Number 23 is an inane numbers game pretending to be a suspenseful psychological thriller. Not only is it not frightening, it's downright laughable.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Narrated in voice-over by the hero, the movie is an object lesson in the dangers of having a storyteller who manufactures his own logic.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
Despite the undeniable conviction of the performers, the film eventually becomes more laughable than chilling.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Gimmicky numerology plus Jim Carrey minus narrative coherence equals "The Number 23," a visually and psychologically murky thriller that, given its hero's paranoid obsession with the titular number, plays like a very grungy episode of "Sesame Street."
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Given a script, by Fernley Phillips, that feels like a film-school exercise--all structure, no stuffing--Joel Schumacher works his familiar anti-magic.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The Number 23 is nowhere near as far-fetched as the movie's eventual outcome, which is so pat it makes you wonder if Phillips wasn't writing the script for a class assignment and was simply unable to continue after "Pencils down." The Number 23 is goofy, implausible, and funny in all the wrong ways.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Gosh, where to end the counting? How about with the fact, helpfully provided in the press notes, that this feature is Joel Schumacher's "23rd film or television directorial assignment." To suggest that's exactly 23 too many might be a tad unkind, but does have the happy benefit of adding to the mystique.
Read Full Review >Premiere Ethan Alter
Aside from being impossible to follow, it was also completely boring!
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Being surreal and dreamlike is one thing, but the elements add up so poorly that the story could have been concocted by a marginally talented chimpanzee.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
There's a mess of things wrong with this suspense thriller. Start with the fact that it's neither suspenseful nor thrilling.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Nathan Lee
For all its relentless number-crunching, this is really a movie about story-telling, and stories within stories, and stories within flashbacks within fantasies within madness -- all of it unloaded with the help of exposition so preposterously contrived it borders on parody.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Director Joel Schumacher and cinematographer Matthew Libatique are Carrey's enablers. Schumacher gives the movie a jittery quality, as if he's having a nervous breakdown, too, and a symptom seems to be that he puts lights in strange places. Libatique is also having a nervous breakdown, and his symptoms include the urge to splatter O-negative red everywhere.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Watching Carrey babble gibberish about the sinister nature of 23 in scene after hyperventilating scene isn't any more fun or enlightening than listening to street-corner lunatics discourse on similar topics. At least street crazies don't expect people to pay bloated movie-ticket prices for the privilege. And The Number 23 isn't worth a pocket full of loose change.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
What is there to say about a movie that teams Schumacher with Carrey, other than that you deserve whatever you get if you go and see it?
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The most interesting character here is an animal, a sturdy-looking white and black bulldog, who appears throughout the movie, angel style, to speak the truth -- silently. In this load of mind-bendy bushwa, he's the only thing worth watching, or listening to.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Bleak and brackish. It makes you want to cover your eyes and clutch your ears. How's that for a quote line?
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Having seen the movie, allow me to throw one additional calculation into the equation: The Number 23 is a zero.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
How bad is The Number 23? It gives "Batman & Robin" a run for its money as the worst of the director's long career.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The film has its own grim fascination as an example of another kind of obsessive thinking -- the process through which a studio apparatus is brought to bear on developing an idea that defies development.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 68 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
rozzy s gave it a6:
I thought it was pretty good. The slating by the critics is totally over the top. Worth watching if someone offers you the chance.
warp100 gave it a1:
I don't understand how anyone can say this is a great movie. It tries to hit you over the head with a concept that doesn't make any sense. I thinks it's clever by including the number 23 somehow every time there's numbers on the screen, but instead of being clever, it's obvious. This isn't the type of movie where after it's over you think about it and notice more and more things. It's a movie were after it's over you think about and it notice how silly it is. If the guy is going to see the number 23 everywhere in other things, like counting letters, at least have a system. Instead he's selectively choosing certain aspects of things that he can add up to 32, then saying "32, that's 23 reversed". No, it's 32. This movie was just terrible.
Jalex D. gave it a10:
I loved this film. It's one of those few I see every year that made me pause to think once the credits came up. It didn't go in the direction I thought it would at all and was very intriguing thru the conclusion.
Jackson Productions gave it a9:
The movie is awesome I really enjoyed watching it! If you get a chance too see it, don't miss it ! The movie looks terrific, and though it always keeps moving, it never feels headlong or rushed. This is a very good movie. It's a total mind f*ck. I really became obsessed by 23 myself I even made a little site about The Number 23.
J.N. S gave it a2:
How incredibly ironic that this movie is one point away from having a metascore of 23. Quick, someone find another bad review. :)
Chris H. gave it a9:
I really liked this film. Does that make me a bad person?
Sophie B gave it a1:
I think Jim Carrey is a great, yes not just good, a great actor who more than showed his ability for good serious acting in the Truman Show (even if he does still show his comic side). I am baffled wondering why he decided to star in such a terrible movie. Everything was badly done, over the top, and it wasn't the sort of bad that's funny. It's the sort of bad that's just boring. I give it '1' instead of '0' because Carrey delivers another decent performance.
