'23': Mysterious number

"The Number 23" is a thriller built around what we are told are the unsettling implications of the title numeral.

The movie trades on the notoriety of the so-called "23 enigma," which refers to the frequency with which 23 turns up in science and religion - we get 23 chromosomes from each parent, geometry has 23 laws, the 23rd Psalm, etc.

23 may also be the I.Q. of the guy who has devised the movie's TV commercials, which show star Jim Carrey as he appears in the movie's final scenes - footage that essentially tips the ending of the movie.

This is bad business, since the movie lives or dies on what is meant to be the shock of its denouement (and is in fact willing to use a phony prologue as a narrative cheat to preserve its Big Reveal).

Without the kicker, there's not much to "23," the study of an animal control officer (Carrey as pet detective again) who becomes obsessed with a novel about a man who believes that the number 23 controls his destiny.

Carrey's character sees uncanny parallels between his life and the life of the character in the book, and believes they can't be coincidental. He believes he can solve the riddle of these coincidences by learning more about the author, and by solving the murder mystery at the core of the novel.

All of it is related, in various ways, to the number 23, or so the movie pretends. Efforts to demonstrate that "23" is the glue that binds the universe become rather strained - when the writers run out of things related to the number 23, they start to lasso innocent numerical bystanders, like 5 (it's 2 plus 3!) or 32 (it's 23 backward!) or 1 (it's 3 minus 2!).

Well, here's a coincidence for you: It will take smart viewers about 23 minutes to figure out where this movie is going. That's not good, as "23" is essentially a puzzle box, like "The Prestige," but not nearly as skilled at keeping viewers guessing.

Here's another coincidence: "23" has uncanny plot similarities to "Stranger Than Fiction," the Will Ferrell comedy about a man who finds out he's a character in someone else's novel. And hey - "Stranger Than Fiction" had uncanny similarities to Carrey's "The Truman Show."

If you kept at it, you could probably think of 23 other similar movies you'd rather be watching. *

Produced by Beau Flynn, Tripp Vinson; directed by Joel Schumacher; written by Fenley Phillips; music by Harry Gregson-Williams, distributed by New Line Cinema.