Take your pick.
Director Dean Parisot is either very brave, very foolish or just plain desperate to helm a feature film.
He’s the man who agreed to direct Jim Carrey in Fun with Dick and Jane when Carrey was not just the star but producer of this slapstick comedy.
That meant Parisot was the person responsible for telling Carrey when to rein things in as if that really is possible these days.
Back in 1999, Parisot directed the delightfully wacky Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest and has been working ever since in TV, directing episodes of Monk, The Tick, The Job and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is what Parisot should have told Carrey more than once during the filming of Dick and Jane.
There are some hilarious bits in Dick and Jane, but there are also several grating examples of Carrey at his excessive, frenetic worst.
Fun with Dick and Jane is a remake of the 1977 comedy that starred Jane Fonda and George Segal as an upwardly mobile couple who become bandits when they suddenly found themselves unemployed.
That flick was actually a vehicle for Fonda allowing her to make social comments between laughs.
This new version is clearly a vehicle for Carrey, who plays Dick Harper a man who’s had a hungry eye on a vice-presidency at Globodyne where he’s worked for 15 years.
His dream becomes a reality and a nightmare when he’s promoted so he can take the blame as Globodyne implodes.
Dick had talked his wife Jane (Tea Leoni) into quitting her job as a travel agent so she could spend more time with their son Billy (Aaron Michael Drozin).
Billy is actually one of the film’s better running jokes. He has been raised by the Mexican housekeeper Blanca (Gloria Garayua), who has taught him to be more fluent in Spanish than English.
Watching Dick and Jane trying to cope with lives that are falling apart is funny in a dark, subversive way.
Carrey has a hysterical sequence when Dick joins a gang of illegal Mexican immigrants looking for day labour.
Eventually Dick and Jane are forced into a life of crime, but too few of these scenes work.
Carrey tries much too hard with physical shtick and he milks the jokes.
Though Carrey and Leone are able to make larceny amusing, Fun with Dick and Jane never achieves the inspired lunacy of such Carrey classics as Liar, Liar or Bruce Almighty.
