Newly appointed as vice president of media conglomerate Globodyne and making his first appearance on the Lou Dobbs-like show “Money Life,” Dick Harper faces a formidable sparring partner: the news crawl.
Set up by his CEO and sent to the 24-hour news beast like a pig to slaughter, Harper can only sweat profusely as dire pronouncements shriek across the screen:
“CEO McCallister sells ALL his stock!”
“Globodyne Globo dying?”
Yes, Globodyne Globo dies, and Harper, a 15-year company man with a pension and savings tied up in Globodyne stock, becomes the laughingstock of the business world, the fall guy for one of the biggest corporate fallouts of all time. His boss, a self-proclaimed “reformer with results,” hops on a private helicopter and escapes the paper shredding unscathed.
This is all within the first 15 promising minutes of “Fun With Dick and Jane,” a contemporary remake of the 1977 film of the same name, which starred George Segal and Jane Fonda back when our current reformer with results was still a newlywed in Midland and Enron just a twinkle in Kenneth Lay’s eye.
The latest version, directed by Dean Parisot (“Galaxy Quest”) with a script co-written by Nicholas Stoller and “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” mastermind Judd Apatow, capitalizes modestly on current events at first — though Enron collapsed some four years ago — but then gets stuck somewhere between social satire and slapstick, never properly, or humorously, addressing the contradiction of its central gimmick: To fight the power and keep their upper-middle-class lifestyle, complete with plasma TV and a son who speaks his nanny’s language, Dick and wife Jane (Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni) turn to crime.
They rob a tattoo parlor and stick up a sushi bar not as modern-day Robin Hoods but to finally install that inground pool.
You got a problem with that?
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Before the crime spree, Dick and Jane hit bottom.
Wanting — no, needing — the stainless kitchen and manicured lawn, the Harpers have lived beyond their means. Now, with property values plummeting with the departure of Globodyne, their house is worthless, their lawn repossessed and their electricity shut off.
Dick has trouble getting blue-collar work — his former co-workers have filled all the good jobs at Burger King — and Jane is forced to wear flannel.
Carrey and Leoni do well by this material, pulling out the comedy from tragedy and relaxing when there is none. But just as we get comfortable with Dick and Jane playing poor — we’ll call this the “Nickel and Dimed” portion of the film — they slap on some masks and turn into wannabe Bonnie and Clydes, robbing from the working class to feed their appetite for designer clothes and upscale friends.
This is familiar clowning territory for our actors — hypothetically well-matched here, with Carrey a far more sophisticated and energetic comic partner for Leoni than Adam Sandler was in “Spanglish.”
But after Act 1: Poverty, the rest of “Dick and Jane” is thin and flimsy, with a crime montage and hair-brained scheme that begs these comic vets to phone it in.
Carrey gets another chance to throw his limbs around and make faces; Leoni does her neurotic/aggressive routine; and Alec Baldwin plays a mighty mogul for the second time this year (“Elizabethtown”).
It’s inoffensive material with few laughs and even fewer jabs. And when the end credits thank guys such as Jeffrey Skilling and Bernie Ebbers, you’ll swear it should be the other way around.
Sticking it to the Man has never been so agreeable.
“Fun With Dick and Jane”
(star)(star)
Directed by Dean Parisot; written by Judd Apatow and Nicholas Stoller; photographed by Jerzy Zielinski; edited by Don Zimmerman; production designed by Barry Robison; music by Theodore Shapiro; produced by Brian Grazer and Jim Carrey. A Columbia Pictures and Imagine Entertainment release; opens Wednesday. Running time: 1:30.
Dick Harper …………………….. Jim Carrey
Jane Harper …………………….. Tea Leoni
Jack McCallister ………………… Alec Baldwin
Frank Bascombe ………………….. Richard Jenkins
MPAA rating: PG-13 (brief language, some sexual humor and occasional humorous drug references).
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abenedikt@tribune.com
