Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Cable Guy (1996)
Director: Ben Stiller
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A twisted and often nasty black comedy. When naive suburbanite Broderick asks Carrey's over-eager Cable Guy to give him a few extra channels for free, he has no idea he's inviting the wired-up plugster into his life. Newly separated from his girlfriend, Broderick is sucked into his socially inept pal's deranged fantasy world, the result of a lonely boyhood spent watching TV. Carrey's whirlwind comic energy is too spontaneous and elusive to be contained by Lou Holtz Jr's initially unsettling script. Also, Stiller's erratic direction fails to establish a consistent tone, so that obvious, crowd pleasing set-pieces alternate with creepy, disturbing weirdness. Compare, for instance, Carrey's typically berserk karaoke rendition of Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to Love?' with the nightmarish sequence in a kitschy Arthurian theme restaurant, where he and Broderick quaff ale and gnaw chicken before fighting, virtually to the death, with swords, axes, maces and jousting lances. Nevertheless, because it dares to expose the dark side of Carrey's persona, and to take chances at this pivotal stage in his meteoric career, Stiller's film ranks as an honourable failure.Author: NF
User reviews of this film
-
- brad said...
- Posted on Jun 23 2008 12:08 it was a bit poo but i love jim carrey. sertainly not in that movie and i dont think it had a conclusion in the end so i would say not the best of movies. xx
- Report as inappropriate
Cast & crew
Director: Ben Stiller
Producer: Andrew Licht, Jeffrey A Mueller, Judd Apatow
Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, Jack Black, Diane Baker, George Segal, Ben Stiller, Eric Roberts, Janeane Garofalo full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 96 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now