THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408050087
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BRENT A. BOWLES, TEENOLOGY MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, when watching the irreverent comedy show ``In Living Color,'' I noticed the actor playing ``Fire Marshall Bill,'' an obscure comedian named Jim Carrey.
I can remember saying, ``This guy is going to be big.'' With ``The Mask,'' rubber-faced Carrey has firmly established himself as a star, ranking with Robin Williams as one of the best comedic actors around.
But the real star of ``The Mask'' is not Carrey's multifaceted, exchangeable face, but the visual effects work of Industrial Light and Magic.
Carrey plays a mild-mannered, Clark Kent-like bank teller named Stanley Ipkis who finds a mysterious mask that harbors the spirit of a 4th-century god of mischief. It expresses the innermost feelings of its wearer.
When Carrey wears it, he becomes a green-faced, gaping creature that has enough retorts and gags to fill five ``Naked Gun'' movies.
Carrey is great as this quasi-superhero, but when he dons the makeup, we lose the wonderful expressiveness of his face. Hence a great deal of what made him so funny in ``Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'' is lost.
Making up what is lost are those creative geniuses at Industrial Light and Magic, a pioneering special effects company formed in 1976 for ``Star Wars.''
Through their wizardry in computer graphics and digital imagery (the same company made dinosaurs roam ``Jurassic Park'') they turn Carrey's superhero into a walking Warner Bros. cartoon, replete with dropping jaws, bugging eyes and amazing antics.
You'll probably find yourself laughing in spite of yourself. It is not surprising that the most applause came not at any jokes, but at ILM's name on the credits, partly because a senior animator for the film happened to be in the audience.
It's a toss-up whether ILM will win the Oscar for this or for the work in ``Forrest Gump.''
The rest of the cast is low-key and unimportant, as is a plot. What story there is concerns some power-hungry crime boss who wants to take over Edge City. There are threads of story lines, but they are discarded in favor of Carrey's mischief. The film can't decide whether it wants to be an outrageous comedy, or a serio-comic action movie.
There are unpleasant forays into seriousness toward the end, but Carrey and ILM always seem to show up in the nick of time, and Randy Edelman's music never seems to get too serious.
Don't go to ``The Mask'' unless you're going to watch either Jim Carrey or the visual effects, because there's nothing else attractive about this movie. While there may not be quite enough jokes to last 100 minutes, Carrey's zany style and irreverence and the dazzling effects hold this movie together. MEMO: ``The Mask'' is rated PG-13. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Brent Bowles is a 1994 graduate of Princess Anne.
by CNB