Subsections below:
The story: a crime
caper plus a Jekyll-and-Hyde variation
Where the fun is:
Carrey, augmented, a la Looney Tunes mania
A feast of colorful
(if stock) characters, and even a Latino-style dance sequence
[Edits 7/1/14. Edits 7/6/14.]
Let me first say that, while this film is probably most widely
known about (today) by those fanboys and –girls of the comic series The Mask, I don’t know the comic series,
and indeed am not a big comic-series person at all. Just as quickly, I don’t
want to seem antagonistic to that constituency, as I might seem at times in my
blog toward the sci-fi/fantasy constituency, with which I court a little
disfavor only in a semi-playful way that need not be further explained at this
time.
Here, I just want to look at a film that is interesting even
for those who are not comics mavens. It is a well-crafted, detail-rich film,
with a lively sense of fun in fleshing out its fantasy-shaped world. Its
director, Charles (“Chuck”) Russell, seemed to have a firm, creative grip
on the rudder of this film (and his DVD commentary shows his clear ideas and
craftsmanly approach). It also remains remarkable for doing this in line with
the early-1990s level of CGI; some might find it old-fashioned today in this
regard, but I like how well it achieves its effects, in melding “analog” production
techniques with old-school CGI.
Moreover, it has a colorful performance by Jim Carrey,
who took the cinematic world by some kind of storm in 1994 with his effective
debut (outside TV) in “Jerry Lewis–plus” roles in no fewer than three films: Ace Venture: Pet Detective; this
one; and Dumb and Dumber.
The story: a crime
caper plus a Jekyll-and-Hyde variation
The film is influenced to a large extent by comics (in its
stylized sets and visual touches) and noir sensibility (the crime aspect, a
sense of doom hanging over Edge City, and noir’s visuals “represented” by color
schemes here—such as juxtaposed red and blue). Whatever the Mask comic’s conception of the
character, Jim Carrey’s Mask is a sort of ambiguous Mr. Hyde to his
clean-shaven Dr. Jekyll of a bank worker, Stanley Ipkiss. Russell notes that
there was debate in preproduction about how to design the Mask character for
the film, especially how far to go making him a dark creature heading a sort of
horror film. The film ends up delivering a variation on the Jekyll-and-Hyde
story, with the Mask the creature that is not quite a horror, which Stanley
turns into when he puts on a mask that he had found floating amid garbage in a
river (it had earlier been accidentally freed from a submerged, locked chest).
The Mask, in effect, releases all the Id-type sides of a
person’s character (to reference Freud), and then some. When Stanley becomes
the Mask, he becomes a wild, jokey, mugging character who likes to party,
doesn’t feel remorse over robbing a bank, and otherwise leaves a trail of
mischief and “goofing with” people—and proving to be an amalgam of the Tex
Avery–style Looney Tunes cartoon characters of the 1940s, Daffy Duck, Bugs
Bunny, Yosemite Sam, the Tasmanian Devil, and others. This represents the third
major influence on the film, the Looney Tunes one (some of the trademarks are
shown in shots), which moves the film from a horror angle to a more
loony-cartoon, let’s-be-a-wildman story. Here, Carrey with his moderate, cartoonish-but-fun
histrionics when he’s Stanley is melded in alternate scenes to his CGI-aided,
wilder Mask character, which allows him to ape various of the Looney Tunes characters,
and this provides the most fun component of the film.
The plot is easy enough to apprehend from a few viewings:
Stanley is “targeted” as a sort of dupe by Tina Carlisle (a debuting Cameron Diaz), who is a cabaret singer in a club
run by Dorian Tyrell (sounding at least once like “Terrell”—there are different
pronunciations through the film; played by Peter Greene, who is also in The Usual Suspects). Tyrell is an upstart hood with henchmen, who
wants to take over leadership of the city’s underworld culture from Niko (Orestes
Matacena), an aging crime boss who for his own part wants to keep Dorian in
line. With Stanley, Tina pretends to want to open a bank account—allowing a fun
scene with her flirting none-too-subtly with Stanley, with Carrey’s comic take
on a shy yuppie—while (secret from Stanley) she helps Dorian case the bank with
a camera (in her purse) that is broadcasting images of the place to Dorian’s
office. Dorian figures, get some money, then he can take the town over from Niko.
Tina (Diaz playing her seems quite the ingénue here) soon is
proven to be a girl who (1) at first seems a “bad” camp follower of the town
underworld (she starts out as Dorian’s girlfriend), and then, (2) perhaps won
over by the Stanley’s earnest nobility (and aided by a wild dance time at the club with the Mask, who excites her but who she later suspects, to enough satisfaction, is Stanley), is an ally of Stanley’s as a love
relationship develops between them. Tina then helps Stanley quash Dorian’s big plan that sets up
the film’s climax. As you might have guessed, this is a film that, similarly to
Star Wars (1977) or Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) or
numerous others, takes stock or hackneyed plot elements and characters from the
history of film, and builds interest in the audience with the novel ways that these
are adapted in the new film.
Stanley’s bank workmate Charlie (Richard Jeni), who
like others in this film gives a stock performance as a sort of loyal sidekick
(the film rather styles itself after 1940s character styles, as well as in some
of the look), wants to take Stanley on a double date to the Coco Bongo club, an
“in” nightclub—which happens to be run by Dorian.
It is when Stanley drives his horror of a loaner car—his own
is left at a service station, getting more serious repairs than he’d
expected—and it breaks down on a bridge beneath which he finds the mask in the
river. (An expert and book author on “the masks we wear” metaphorically, Dr.
Arthur Neuman [Ben Stein], later tells Stanley in
a professional consultation that the mask looks like an image of Loki, the
Norse god of mischief.)
Once home, after accidentally putting river water on Mrs.
Peenman’s (the landlord’s) carpet, Stanley
eventually gravitates, with curiosity, to putting on the mask. In a swirl of
Tasmanian Devil–like tornado movement, he becomes the green-faced Mask,
complete with somewhat alienating, big-toothed face and jaunty/mischievous
cartoon voice, and the first episode of the Mask’s mischief—and potential for
doing good—happens that night, setting into motion the larger Jekyll-and-Hyde
story.
Police start looking into the mayhem distributed by the Mask
through the city (first at Stanley’s apartment building), and Lieutenant
Kelloway (Peter Riegert) gets fairly
quickly to be on Stanley’s trail. So Stanley ends up with two “enemies”—Dorian,
who resents the Mask’s muscling in on Dorian’s territory in robbing a bank—and
Kelloway, who—having sussed out the connection between Stanley and the Mask—starts
to regard innocent Stanley as a more menacing character than he really is.
Where the fun is:
Carrey, augmented, a la Looney Tunes mania
This shouldn’t be more complicated than I may have made it
sound (though Leonard Maltin’s compendium reflects on the complexity of the
plot); the story is not terribly hard to follow, and the film invites more than
one look, which allows appreciating the story. The real fun comes from seeing
Carrey go through his manic performance as the Mask, and as Stanley becoming increasingly frazzled as he
starts to understand what he, as the Mask, has been doing at night. Stanley’s
story is fleshed out, though it becomes rather hokey, as he accepts the
responsibility of vanquishing Dorian in the latter’s effort to pull off a
climactic, explosive bit of nihilism and revenge at the Coco Bongo club, once
he has gotten the mask from Stanley.
The movie is most detail-oriented, and dense, when it comes
to Carrey’s Mask performance, not only in his acting (which sometimes seems a
bit hammy but usually is on target) aided by CGI that expands the Carrey
physical tricks, but also in the Looney Tunes–style sound effects whose general
nature fans of those cartoons will recognize on seeing the movie. In other
words, a person can’t bend like a rubber two-dimensional character without some
“wow, wow” sound—and it all seems to work here entertainingly, not seeming too
derivate or schlocky.
A feast of colorful
(if stock) characters, and even a Latino-style dance sequence
There are quite a few side characters, and this might make
the film seem cluttered at first, but subsequent viewings endear them to us,
and the added persons liven up interest.
* There is Peggy Brandt (Amy Yasbeck), an earnest newspaper
reporter who first seeks out Stanley as a possible witness to weird doings at the
service station where Stanley’s car has been worked on, and turns out to be a
little more cynical—if still well-meaning to Stanley—than she initially
appears.
* There is Doyle (Jim Doughan), Lieutenant Kelloway’s
assistant who seems here mainly for goofy-comic relief (though he has one truly
funny line, after a long dance sequence involving the city’s police: he says
“The SWAT team got an offer to open in Vegas”).
* Mrs. Peenman (Nancy Fish) is colorful as the irascible,
comically-shrewish landlady.
* A bit of trivia revealed by director Russell on the DVD is
that the cavernous garage that is the setting for the service station was also
the setting for the office (or equivalent) of the “ghostbusters” of the
eponymous 1984 film.
##
There is some humor that may be tasteless to some, or may go
over some people’s heads (example: after the Mask has struck the sleazy service
station and done a physical number, involving loose exhaust pipes, on its two
workers, an emergency worker the next morning requests on his radio that a
proctologist be at hand to treat the two victims).
One feature of the film is a little curious to me. Just as
in some of the old Looney Tunes cartoons, there could be a sudden interlude of
a Hispanic dance number—I can picture Daffy Duck with a Carmen Miranda
headdress leading the dance—the same is done here, but with huger production
values: police cars all around, police dancing, a helicopter with search light.
The music shifts to different styles in suite-like manner, including a conga-train
phase. Director Russell on the DVD says he’d felt this was the centerpiece of
the film. And Carrey, in Mask mode but “magically” dressed in flamenco-dancer
garb, is leading the dance and—singing!
Yes, Carrey singing “Cuban Pete,” and this song is even included on the film
soundtrack recording. Well, in my opinion, Carrey is not a terrific singer, and over the longer term of his career, we haven’t
needed that out of him anyway, but this was early in his film career, and I
guess the producers were trying for every marketing-apt angle they could.
But this dance sequence has the same effect for me that the
old cartoon versions did: it seems a little boring and embarrassing, and
slackens the tension in the film. But after seeing The Mask a few times, you find it grows on you; but still you are
tolerating it to some extent, such as if Old Uncle Vanya does what he always
does at a Sunday family dinner: sings a lively tune from the old country in his
flat voice, and you listen politely, and even get a little pleasure out of it,
but wouldn’t mind if it was never part of the dinner experience in the future.
