Jim Carrey

Funnyman Jim Carrey has had a mixed track record when he's gone dramatic on the big screen. For every success like "The Truman Show" and "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," he's done such turkeys as "The Majestic" and "The Number 23," which arrives today on DVD in an unrated edition (New Line, $29). Directed by Joel Schumacher, the story revolves around a dogcatcher who is given a book called "The Number 23" by his wife (Virginia Madsen).

He's already played the Grinch, and now Jim Carrey is out to ruin Christmas all over again, this time playing Ebenezer Scrooge. Walt Disney Pictures announced Friday that Carrey will play the lead role in the computer-animated, 3-D retelling of "A Christmas Carol," to be directed by Robert Zemeckis. And because Carrey is Carrey, he'll play Scrooge at different ages as well as the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future that haunt Ebenezer and make him rethink his misguided ways.

An elusive dog leads an animal control officer to a graveyard. A mysterious novel contains details of the officer's private life. A woman leaps to her death from a hotel window. And each factor seem to produce the number 23. "The Number 23" is neither a prequel to the TV series "24" nor a reference to the number of flavors said to be in Dr Pepper but a psychological thriller starring Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen.

The high-concept Jim Carrey projects "Used Guys" and "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" imploded, at least partially, over their excessive budgets. But the comedy "A Little Game Without Consequence," which had Carrey re-teaming with Cameron Diaz and was scheduled to start shooting Thursday, fell apart two weeks ago ostensibly over that most essential of filmmaking tools: the screenplay.

The 1994 comedy hit "The Mask," by no means a great film but certainly an entertaining one, possessed eye-popping visuals with a neon fruit salad palette and was one of the first features to exploit Jim Carrey's unique talents to full effect. One of the keys to director Chuck Russell's transformation of milquetoast bank clerk Stanley Ipkiss "from zero to hero," as the tagline went, was placing the wizardly special effects in service of Carrey's substantial physical gifts.

I found James Verini's piece ("In the Kingdom of the Clown," Jan. 2) about Jerry Lewis almost unbearably cynical, snide and ultimately pointless. I can just hear Jerry after he (presumably) read the article: "What ... do I have to do to catch a break from these guys?" After 60 years of groundbreaking performances crossing over into virtually all areas of show business, do we really want to wait until Lewis dies to fully realize his enormous contribution? Or should we simply get sworn statements from geniuses such as Jim Carrey and Martin Short, both of whom would barely be able to pratfall were it not for Lewis showing the way?

Yes, he's definitely got the power. Elastic-face comic Jim Carrey pulled off a stunner this weekend as his divine new comedy, "Bruce Almighty," grossed an estimated $86.4 million -- the second-best Memorial Day opening ever and the biggest of any comedy that wasn't a sequel. Going into the four-day holiday weekend, many had predicted that Universal Pictures' "Bruce Almighty" would do well to break even with Warner Bros.'

Tom SHADYAC has directed three consecutive $100-million-plus comedy hits. His latest film, "Bruce Almighty," which made an estimated $86.4 million this weekend, will easily be his fourth. But to hear his critics tell it, Shadyac is right up there with Saddam and Osama as a scourge of Western civilization. The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter didn't mince words: "If the road to hell is paved with self-deluding good intentions, then the makers of the appalling Jim Carrey comedy 'Bruce Almighty' are headed to the devil's rotisserie for an eternity as gyros."