Review: The Mask

Directed by: Chuck Russell

Written by: Mike Werb

Starring: Jim Carrey, Peter Riegert, Peter Greene, Amy Yasbeck, Richard Jeni, Cameron Diaz

Rating: [2/5]

Merging cartoonish elements with live-action has the potential to inject whimsy to a world typically grounded by the laws of physics. It can attract the attention of children while still engaging the adults, but The Mask decides to walk a tightrope where it does not necessarily succeed in either area. In fact, it struggles to piece together a film with an actual plot and solely exists to just throw bombastic animation our way to an exhausting degree. 

Down-on-his-luck banker, Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) never seems to get treated properly by others around him and seemingly operates as a human doormat. When he picks up a mysterious green mask, his personality changes and he operates as a walking cartoon with a level of confidence he has never exhibited before. 

Finding its origin from a comic book, The Mask presents the opportunity to bring a larger than life persona-altering mask into a story that further lights up the individual who puts it on. Not much of what this mask does receives an explanation other than it makes Jim Carrey’s Stanley Ipkiss much more of a wild man, which hopes to serve as the main selling point of the movie. Carrey already has plenty of weirdness in his performance, in fact, he prides himself in doing so. This only ratchets that up and while it can certainly entertain a youngster, it does not hold up.

One can easily picture how a kid would find much of the humor, even the risqué jokes, hilarious when taking in this film. However, watching this film as an adult just exhibits several of these jokes have not aged particularly well. Not in the belief that it could not be made today but rather this cartoonish over the top comedy just does not land in the same way. From the eyes bulging out of his head when he sees an attractive woman to all of the overextension one can imagine, it feels like a Looney Tunes cartoon in live-action. However, it does not carry the same comedic value. 

With the comedy not landing as it should, we then try to rely on the narrative at hand and hope we get something that can salvage the film. Sadly we get nothing there as well seeing as the film barely has a working plot. It’s just scene after scene of Carrey putting on this mask, acting like a wild man, taking it off and not having much of a recollection of anything done when he donned the mask. The film just continues this cycle until the villain involved finds a way to put on the mask and then somehow uses its powers to cause some havoc. None of it has rhyme or reason for happening, which showed the film just wanted to have the hijinks of wearing this mask and trying to make us laugh to distract us from the fact it had nothing much else to provide. Unfortunately, the film did not succeed in any of these facets. 

Also, not that the film lives through its logic but fails to make sense that everyone would immediately know when fully masked that they know Stanley Ipkiss is behind this mask and causing this havoc. The makeup work of the mask itself makes the individual fairly unrecognizable in my opinion, which makes the majority of what this plot even wants to bring to formulate not make much sense. Again, this film never had any use of logical reasoning but considering it failed in every other aspect, I had nothing to hold onto to get me through this experience. We just had to rush to the next instance of someone putting on the mask and endure whatever wild things that person would do under its power. 

Without a doubt I can understand why many have fond memories of this film, including myself, because much of the baseline comedy seeks to appeal to children even with some of the jokes certainly also having an eye on the adults in the room. However, when you dust off jokes that do not necessarily hold up well, then The Mask does not offer much else in regard to a plot or even moderately memorable characters. It gets saved by Jim Carrey, who was operating at his prime in the 1990s that made this even somewhat watchable.