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June 14, 1996
The Cable Guy
By JANET MASLIN
ollywood has already rocked Alcatraz and blown away parts of Oklahoma; space aliens are poised to zap the White House in next month's "Independence Day." But the true disaster movie of the summer may just be "The Cable Guy," a grim, sour Jim Carrey comedy that erases the boundary between anarchic humor and sociopathic malice.
Though this should have been an opportunity for Carrey to expand upon his runaway success and solidify long-term stardom, "The Cable Guy" instead offers the shocking sight of a volatile comic talent in free fall. Set free to indulge his inner infant, he abandons the gleeful mischief of his "Ace Ventura" days for a much nastier and less entertaining alter ego.
Carrey, who won legions of fans just by speaking from his buttocks, now tries the creepy gambit of talking with a lisp, sneering at strangers, behaving like a deranged stalker and wallowing in sad, stale references to ancient television shows. The film's only unifying attitudes are misanthropy and contempt.
Such antics are sure to scare off part of Carrey's devoted following. (Don't even dream about "The Cable Guy" as a film for children. They'd be better off reading supermarket tabloids and watching the evening news.)
Yet the star's record-breaking fee for this film may not be unwarranted, provided that Hollywood sticks to its current credo: take the money and run. "The Cable Guy" may generate short-range big business on the strength of Carrey's past reputation, but there will be fallout from the fact that he has been paid $20 million for giving a scary, uneven performance that's often painful to watch. This is the way to kill a golden goose.
"I can be your best friend or your worst enemy," declares Carrey's insidious loner, a cable television repairman who develops a barnaclelike attachment to a customer named Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick, a solidly good straight man).
Actually, this weirdo can be both, which is the basis for the film's intermittently satirical tone. The Cable Guy, whose various aliases recall the sitcoms of a baby boom childhood or Nick at Nite, is a pure creature of the television age, and the film suggests he is to be both pitied and tuned out. Beyond that, "The Cable Guy" quickly exhausts its deep thinking and is left with the spectacle of Carrey going out of control.
For instance: when the Cable Guy (despite an almost sexual fixation on his new friend) decides to help Steven win back a girlfriend (Leslie Mann), he tracks this woman to a restaurant where she is having dinner with a date. Lurking in the men's room, the Cable Guy then forces the date's head into a toilet. He plucks the date's eyebrows, dusts him with powder and forces him to suck on a hand dryer. When the date is forced down on the floor, the Cable Guy dances around him with glee.
"The Cable Guy" includes a number of similarly malicious outbursts, which are not made wittier by their goofiness or their knowing, pop-referential tone. When the Cable Guy, going berserk in California's Medieval Times theme restaurant, imagines himself in a "Star Trek" episode and attacks Steven with a mace, the salient fact is that he is stalking his friend while wielding a ball and chain. And when he plays with his food and begins imitating Hannibal Lecter, there's no fun in watching Carrey covering his face with chicken skin.
The empty mean-spiritedness of those episodes matches the film's gray look and glum overall tone. In a particularly desperate sequence, the Cable Guy mysteriously fills Steven's apartment with audiovisual equipment, then throws a karaoke party for a group of ghastly-looking extras. To invoke the violence seen in "Gimme Shelter," Carrey launches into an evil rendition of "Somebody to Love." He also tries shaking up the status quo with a pornographic parlor game.
Carrey's wildly unpredictable comic range also lends itself to the occasional parody, but even those bits are on the depressing side. "Midnight Express?" (He bares his breast and presses it against the glass while visiting Steven in jail.) "Goldeneye?" (The action involves a huge satellite dish.) "Waterworld?" None of these cries out for a satirical second look, although the producing team behind "The Cable Guy" can take credit for "Waterworld," too.
Ben Stiller directs "The Cable Guy" with professional skill but without the blithe comic flair he brought to "Reality Bites." Stiller fares better in staging quick, isolated gags than with finding a consistent comic tone in the screenplay by Lou Holtz Jr. Stiller also makes cameo appearances (as do Janeane Garofalo and various others) in secondary sketches that are notably funnier than the film's main story line.
Ms. Garofalo has a walk-on as a grumpy "serving wench" at Medieval Times, while Stiller stars in a lurid trial on Court TV. Looking suitably furtive and guilty, he plays a television child star accused of murdering his twin brother. Later on, this sleazy story winds up being filmed as a movie-of-the-week starring Eric Roberts as the twins, which is meant to suggest tabloid culture at its most benighted. Unfortunately, "The Cable Guy" is in no position to throw stones.
THE CABLE GUYRating: "The Cable Guy" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes violence, profanity, sexual references, prostitution and much free-floating hostility and menace.
Cast: Jim Carrey (Cable Guy), Matthew Broderick (Steven), Leslie Mann (Robin), Ben Stiller (Sam Sweet), Janeane Garofalo (Waitress) and Eric Roberts (as himself).
Directed by Ben Stiller; written by Lou Holtz Jr.; director of photography, Robert Brinkmann; edited by Steven Weisberg; music by John Ottman; production designer, Sharon Seymour; produced by Andrew Licht, Jeffrey A. Mueller and Judd Apatow; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 91 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
Showtimes and tickets from777-FILM Online
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