Jim Carrey’s career has taken some interesting turns over the years. After becoming a box-office juggernaut in the mid-1990s with the blazing blockbuster streak of “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “The Mask,” “Dumb and Dumber,” “Batman Forever,” and “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls,” he found the ditch with the commercial and critical wipeout of Ben Stiller’s darkly comedic curveball “The Cable Guy.” The thoughtful actor reestablished his commercial connection with mainstream moviegoers the following year with “Liar Liar,” then took another risk with Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show.” The result was one of the best films of 1998, one that received a curious smattering of Oscar nominations for Weir (Director), Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), and Original Screenplay (Andrew Niccol). That a film as acclaimed and successful as “The Truman Show” could be denied Best Picture and Best Actor nods in a weak year felt like a rebuke of its star. Many Academy members simply couldn’t get past the fact that, just four years earlier, this man had literally been talking out of his butt on the big screen.
Oscar voters sent a clear message that year: Carrey had to earn his nomination, which, given that they denied him in 1999 for his eerily perfect portrayal of Andy Kaufman in “Man on the Moon,” meant some vague semblance of distance and seriousness was required. This was dumb, and I wonder if it eventually wore Carrey out. After the prestige non-starter that was Frank Darabont’s “The Majestic” in 2001, he rebounded with the performance of his career to date in Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” More mixed signals: the acclaimed/successful masterpiece snagged a paltry pair of nominations for Actress (Kate Winslet) and Screenplay (for Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, and Pierre Bismuth, which they won), while Carrey got nothing (he was also denied by the Screen Actors Guild).
Carrey responded with a pair of quality commercial flicks in “Fun with Dick and Jane” and “Yes Man,” and the lousy thriller “The Number 23.” Now that the sight of his chatty ass was over a decade in the rearview, the time felt right for another serious movie. This is when a scorchingly hot original screenplay hit Hollywood. It needed an actor with a manic edge. Carrey felt like a perfect fit. The role eventually went to Mel Gibson, and the film flopped. How did such a promising project go so wrong?