Number 23, The

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

What kills "23" are any number of bad choices that render the movie tone-deaf, sometimes hilariously so.

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.

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!

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The tricky mathematical puzzles never add up, and the pulpy Raymond Chandler pastiches are more parody than potent.

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.

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.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

It's humorless save when it's laughable.

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

Despite the undeniable conviction of the performers, the film eventually becomes more laughable than chilling.

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."

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.

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.

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.

Premiere Ethan Alter

Aside from being impossible to follow, it was also completely boring!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Having seen the movie, allow me to throw one additional calculation into the equation: The Number 23 is a zero.

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.

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.