The Number 23

I watched the movie, "The Number 23" yesterday with the kids. Don't worry, we fast -forwarded through the "adult relationship" parts (the kids always say, "Yuck, old people kissing.")

My daughter LOVES horror movies. Well, at least she says she does. I don't let them watch horror movies, so it's not clear to me how she has arrived at this determination. She's a sweet, sweet kid whose capacity for empathy never ceases to amaze me. It's odd to me that she finds scary movies to be so appealing. Maybe it's an outlet for her. Maybe for the hour that she's being scared, she's abandoning an ordered and demanding life. It can be tough being nice.

My son says he likes horror movies, but I've also heard him up at night after watching a scary movie. He's not allowed to watch horror movies at all. They have only recently been allowed to watch the news. I think there's plenty of horror in the everyday newscast, I don't believe we need the fantasy of Freddie or Jason when we have the reality of suicide bombers. I usually preview movies that I'm not too sure about before I decide whether the kids can watch them.

Anyway, back to the movie. This fellow becomes obsessed with a book that explores the meaning of the number 23. The movie explores the historical importance of the number 23 and how it is linked to many infamous moments in history. Caesar's death, the name of serial killers, the birth dates of assassins. For example, in the movie the main character learns that the Mayans predicted that the world would end in 2012 -- 20 + 1 +2 = 23. The main character realizes that his birthday, his name and his address all add up to 23. Pardon me, some of his details added up to 32 which is, you've got it, 23 backwards. This is where they lost me 32 is not 23 backwards, it's a different number. "Pink is red and white, red and white add up to 92, there are four letters in pink, 92 divided by 4 is - uh huh - 23. As my brother says, 10 + 2 + 5 + zebra equals 23!

Jim Carrey plays the lead character and, while I'm not a huge fan of his comedy stylings, I was curious to see how he would make out in this kind of movie. (Besides, he's Canadian and we have to support our artists. By the way, NO, I did not download this movie. It makes me sad to hear that we are a country of pirates. I have no explanation. Only a humble apology on behalf of my countrymen.)

When it was over, I looked at the kids and they looked at me. We figured that the best way to find out, "what the heck was that about?" was to proceed to the Special Features and find out what the director/writer/producer was thinking. No such luck. Lots of credits (not necessary, in my opinion) but no explanation. We could have watched the movie again while the director prattled on about character development and the importance of the wall colour in the dining room but, quite frankly, I wasn't prepared to give this film 97 more minutes of my life. It was, in my opinion, 74 minutes longer than it had to be.

Message to Jim Carrey. Good job! I was quite convinced that you are a nutjob...though I was halfway there before I turned on the movie. I'd like to see you try this type of role again but in a movie that's not bad.

That's it. There is no secret message in this post. You will NOT find a clue by reading every 23rd word, and if this post makes it to the blog in a number of lines that is a multiple of 23, it is not by my design. For those of you still fascinated by the theories surrounding the number 23, it might interest you to know that my birthday falls on October 13. Boo!