I had only seen each movie once, though, so it was time for a reconsideration of The Mask just as it was time for a reconsideration of Bull Durham.
It also follows a little mini theme for Carrey himself, since I only just rewatched Carrey's The Truman Show earlier this month as well, also for the first time since I originally saw it in the 1990s.
It also happens to mark 30 years since The Mask was released, though that's just a fortuitous additional benefit rather than a driving force behind the viewing.
The Mask viewing went better than the Bull Durham viewing, and I think it had everything to do with expectations.
In checking out the star ratings I gave these movies retroactively when I added all my movies to Letterboxd in 2012, I saw it fit to consider Bull Durham a four-star movie, while Carrey's second major feature after Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was worthy of only 2.5 stars. I wouldn't say I could flip-flop those ratings, because four stars is too high for The Mask. But 2.5 stars also might be too high for Bull Durham.
I assumed no one else really thought The Mask was all that great, but my experience recording with two younger guys for The ReelGood Podcast convinced me otherwise. They seemed to both have a genuine fondness for the 1994 Chuck Russell film, considering the "Cuban Pete" number in particular to be comedic gold. There was one podcast we did where one of the other guys made a bit of a meme of the "Chick-a-boom" refrain from the song, which of course didn't mean anything to me because I didn't remember it. Back then, a seed was planted that I should probably rewatch The Mask, which I have now finally done.
You'd think I should have liked The Mask more. I went for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective quite a bit, watching it three times during a single five-day rental (a weird sort of anomaly that I have never repeated with any other movie), and Dumb and Dumber and The Cable Guy constitute two of the three Carrey movies in my top 50 on Flickchart (the other being Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The way Carrey commits to his comedic choices is one of the things I value most about him, and he certainly commits in The Mask.
So what held me back? I think it's the same thing that keeps me from embracing Looney Tunes as much as some others of my generation and some other animation fans embrace it. I don't think seeing eyes bug out of Carrey's head or his heart bug out of Carrey's chest is as fun as some people find it. I don't think watching a man who is literally and figuratively a tornado, where everything he says is in quotation marks, is such a hoot. In short, tone it down a little please.
On this viewing, I wasn't significantly more ingratiated to the alter ego of Carrey's Stanley Ipkis, though I didn't find him actively annoying, which was good. And I found all the material where Stanley is not possessed by the mask to be better than I remembered. Since I feel I am quite familiar with the other Carrey from this era, having seen each of the movies I listed previously at least four times, watching The Mask was kind of like uncovering a treasure trove of hidden material from an actor whose other work from this era had already provided me plenty of joy.
Of course, you can't talk about The Mask without talking about Cameron Diaz, who was first introduced to us here. (She even gets an "and introducing" credit at the start, which is appropriate since this was her film debut.) Friends and I were instantly infatuated with Diaz from this movie, which isn't surprising, because the movie presents her as what we would have called a "sexpot" back then. In part because she seemed to actively avoid this sort of role afterwards, this is a unique version of Diaz that we wouldn't see again -- even the shape of her face seems to be different in the many other roles she immediately started getting after this one. So while this shouldn't be considered Diaz' signature role and it certainly isn't her best example of the craft of acting, it does hold a certain unique spot in her career as such an anomaly in the types of roles she played. It was immediately apparent the sort of star power she had, and she immediately took that star power and transformed it to speak more to the sort of persona she wanted to cultivate. That's a hard trick to pull off in your early 20s.
I also find myself really skeeved out by the look in the eye of Peter Greene as the villain. As I was watching the movie, I realized he shares a sort of glower with someone like Aidan Quinn when he has played a villain, even with recent Oscar winner Cillian Murphy when he plays a villain. Is it just me or do you see something similar in the eyes of all three of these actors? The comparison to Quinn first hit me because I looked up Greene to see if he had been in Stakeout, and of course that was Quinn. (Which would be another movie to rewatch, though that one would be a personal favorite of mine.) In fact, it was difficult for me to believe that the only other movie I really know Greene from is Pulp Fiction, where he plays Zed. That look in his eye must be ingrained in me from that movie and not from some other performance of his that I've seen multiple times.
Okay, I think I will continue my long four-day Easter weekend with something new tonight.
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