FUN WITH DICK AND JANE (2005) ** Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins.
Toothless satire remake of a largely forgotten comedy.
Why does Hollywood continue to remake films that are in no way clamoring to be remade? In the latest 're-imagining' of a 'comedy' from the '70s that never registered to begin with the original FUN WITH DICK AND JANE with George Segal and Jane Fonda, I must admit do not remember at all. I was maybe ten when if first came out and when it premiered on cable most of it was over my head for a sophisticated farce about a middle-class couple facing life on another viewing when the corporate ladder hubby has been scaling shakes him free from his ascent to financial security.
In the toothless 21st century attempt to shock the system, Dick Harper (sadly underused Carrey) is a VP wannabe of an Enron-like conglomerate that is on the verge of financial ruin and federal indictments aplenty when its CEO Jack McCallister (a slimily bearded Baldwin) absconds with its pension plans for his own personal gains while alighting on the company helicopter as Dick has been publicly humiliated as the investors' patsy.
Dick's downward spiral continues as his wife Jane (Leoni, ditto) attempts to maneuver their lateral positions for the best even if it means paying their housekeeper in appliances when the money run out.
What could have been a clever skewering of the '00s blight of corporate thievery and deceit comes across as a slap-happy sitcom sized rejoinder to the rat race with the indisposed couple resorting to stick-up jobs at the local mini- mart and eventually all paths leading back to the man responsible for their plight.
Carrey and Leoni make the most of their slight screenplay (by Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller and Peter Tolan) and the ham-fisted direction by Dean Parisot but ultimately the story is rather beleaguered and the send-off ending feels tacked on.
Too bad the comedy that could've been - sticking it to THE MAN - never comes to fruition.
Toothless satire remake of a largely forgotten comedy.
Why does Hollywood continue to remake films that are in no way clamoring to be remade? In the latest 're-imagining' of a 'comedy' from the '70s that never registered to begin with the original FUN WITH DICK AND JANE with George Segal and Jane Fonda, I must admit do not remember at all. I was maybe ten when if first came out and when it premiered on cable most of it was over my head for a sophisticated farce about a middle-class couple facing life on another viewing when the corporate ladder hubby has been scaling shakes him free from his ascent to financial security.
In the toothless 21st century attempt to shock the system, Dick Harper (sadly underused Carrey) is a VP wannabe of an Enron-like conglomerate that is on the verge of financial ruin and federal indictments aplenty when its CEO Jack McCallister (a slimily bearded Baldwin) absconds with its pension plans for his own personal gains while alighting on the company helicopter as Dick has been publicly humiliated as the investors' patsy.
Dick's downward spiral continues as his wife Jane (Leoni, ditto) attempts to maneuver their lateral positions for the best even if it means paying their housekeeper in appliances when the money run out.
What could have been a clever skewering of the '00s blight of corporate thievery and deceit comes across as a slap-happy sitcom sized rejoinder to the rat race with the indisposed couple resorting to stick-up jobs at the local mini- mart and eventually all paths leading back to the man responsible for their plight.
Carrey and Leoni make the most of their slight screenplay (by Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller and Peter Tolan) and the ham-fisted direction by Dean Parisot but ultimately the story is rather beleaguered and the send-off ending feels tacked on.
Too bad the comedy that could've been - sticking it to THE MAN - never comes to fruition.