The Cable Guy: Ben Stiller

I dread movies like Ben Stiller's The Cable Guy. It isn't just bad, it's unpleasant. The entire film is a gauntlet of discomfort. There have been other movies which have elicited similar responses from me that I enjoyed and even loved. But The Cable Guy operates under the false assumption that it's a dark comedy when there isn't anything funny about it at all. The jokes come off as unnecessarily cruel and the slapstick is too over-the-top (at least considering the rest of the film's tone). But the film's biggest miscalculation was Jim Carrey's performance as the eponymous Cable Guy. Carrey is simply too obnoxious to be likable or to seem sympathetic when we learn about his troubled childhood. If his performance had been more low-key, it would have been a lot better. You know who would have been perfect for this role? A younger Robert De Niro. In fact...I think he already did this film with Martin Scorsese. It was entitled The King of Comedy (1982). Think about it. Listen, I can appreciate what Stiller was trying to do with this film. He wanted to comment on modern American society by portraying a character who was almost literally raised by television. Carrey's character was the old stereotype of children whose brains had been rotted by television taken to its natural extreme. But, again, a quieter and more controlled performance might have saved this film.

1/10