Fun With Dick and Jane Review

Fun with Dick and Jane
Principle Cast: Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni
Review: Jonathan McCrea

Jim Carrey’s latest comedy is the first Hollywood film to attempt to satirise the Enron scandal. What with anti-capitalism being so darn sexy these days it certainly seemed the perfect time to give the regular guy on the street a voice. To vent the public’s outrage. And to cash in.
Set in 2000 just before all hell broke loose, the story is an updated version of the so-so 1977 original that starred George Segal and Jane Fonda. Dick (Carrey) and Jane Harper (Tea Leoni) are your average couple living in suburbia playing by the rules. When Dick gets set up by the CEO of his corporation Globodyne, he’s left penniless, pensionless and destitute. When their front lawn is repossessed, the couple decide enough is enough and take to burglary to make ends meet.
It’s billed as an out-and-out comedy, but on the promotional circuit Carrey, who also produces, is keen to stress the social commentary in Fun With Dick and Jane. ‘It’s got an anti-corporate greed message’ he insists. The film is made by Sony, yes? Irony aside, there are some clever references to the state of the nation in this stock studio comedy. The immigrant situation, Walmart, and of course Enron all get a couple of digs but they’re just too subtle. If this started out as a front-row two fingers to the fat cats of the blue-chips, it has ended up as a vague tut-tutting from somewhere in the back.
In fact, Fun with Dick and Jane was bankrupt before it opened for business. The aimless story doesn’t grip, the characters are domestic and the gags are mediocre. While Carrey has rescued situations like this before (Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar) he’s done so under the guidance of a gifted comic writer and director. Dean Parisot, who has only Galaxy Quest to show for, is just not there yet.
And there’s poor Tea Leoni, who was excellent in Flirting with Disaster, but only second choice for this role after Cameron Diaz. Given only a week’s rehearsals, she’s thrown in at the deep end and asked to walk on water. While Diaz certainly has the quirkiness to bounce off Carrey’s trademark improv, Leoni by her own admission, works best off a script. As a result their scenes together seem unbalanced. Par for the course, the two have banged on about their immediate chemistry, but there’s little evidence of it on-screen.
It’s not entirely bereft of wit; Alec Baldwin does a good job as CEO of Globodyne and Dick and Jane dressed up as Sonny and Cher will horrify. A hint of what the movie could have been is in the special thanks section of the credits. Named and shamed are the CEOs of Enron and other baddies but the clever sting seems ill-fitted considering the rest of the film was so muted.
For a comedy Fun with Dick and Jane film falls far short of well, fun. In this rushed schedule-filler for Carrey the punches are pulled too many times and one wonders if it were independently produced would it not have been sharper. His worst for a good while.