I, for some reason or another, always wanted to watch this movie but never got to it. It is, as I write this, thirteen years after the film was released. The reasons I wanted to see it are easy enough to defineâ€"in 1996, I was twelve years...
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I, for some reason or another, always wanted to watch this movie but never got to it. It is, as I write this, thirteen years after the film was released. The reasons I wanted to see it are easy enough to defineâ€"in 1996, I was twelve years old and, obviously, crazy about those zany comedies that Jim Carrey was in (and nearly every memberâ€"both great and forgettableâ€"of sketch shows like In Living Color and that awful stretch of Saturday Night Live were in). It was a humor that was aimed at my demographic and, let's face it, the marketing worked; for thirteen years friends and associates have quoted this flick and I've known where said quotations have come from, but had never actually seen it.

Why did I end up watching it? I have no idea. At this point in my life my tastes run more to the Wes Anderson end of the spectrum than the early-to-mid-90's goofball comedy. But for some reason I found myself drawn to it, again and again, and never seeing itâ€"adding it to my Netflix queue, say, and then burying it under all the other things I wanted to see.

So, after finally getting to it, I can't say that my life is genuinely richer for having seen it. I also can't say that I didn't find myself smirking through the entire thing, though; remember those days when Jim Carrey hadn't ever produced a film that made us stop, think, reflect, care? In those helcyon days of yore before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, let alone The Truman Show? He was made of elastic, back then, and all directors (including Ben Stiller on this picture) felt the need to give us extreme closeups on him, from varying and unsettling angles.

What I love about watching movies from this era is picking out the people in them that, as of the time the films were released, didn't fully have careers. In this movie alone we've got both David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, whose 'Mr. Show' had only begun airing the year prior to this film but who had both been on The Ben Stiller Show earlier on. There's both Jack Black and Kyle Gass (both parts of Tenacious D), Stiller's longtime friend Owen Wilson, and even cameos from BSS co-stars Janeane Garofolo and Andy Dick. Such a smattering of talent, most of which had yet to be fully noticed.