Comic-book fantasy about a nebbishy bank clerk who fishes a 4th- or 5th-century Scandinavian mask out of the bay, and is transformed by it into the pea-headed embodiment -- pea-like in color, that is, not size, and canned not frozen -- of his wildest dreams. There's no stinting on the special effects: something like Claymation renderings of Roger Rabbit & Co., with full Toontown elasticity and resiliency. The form adopted by the hero is "explained" by his fondness for old cartoons, but no explanation is forthcoming for why, when he can conjure up clothes, guns, whatever his imagination can picture, he must resort to bank robbery when he desires cash. A far larger area of neglect is the reaction to him, or lack of same, from the mere mortals around him: if a man, even an odd-looking one with a green head and a yellow zoot suit, were seen at a nightclub to pop his eyeballs a good foot out of their sockets, to drop his jaw all the way to the table top, and to roll out his tongue like a red carpet, the spectacle would be at least as astonishing, among other things, as, say, the arrival of the aliens from space at the end of Close Encounters or the appearance of living dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. And for all the hard work, and sometimes even humorous work, of the effects themselves, they are never less than ugly. Very often more: tasteless, garish, overstated, out of control. Jim Carrey, who from inside his disguise gets to broadcast vocal impressions of Clint Eastwood, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, et al., seems to be an agile and an ingratiating funnyman, but he is herein demoted to second banana by the special effects. Directed by Charles Russell. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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