“This might hurt a little”
When nice guy Steve (Matthew Broderick) takes small talk with the Cable Guy (Jim Carrey) just one seemingly harmless question too far, he inadvertently introduces something very unpleasant and not at all funny into his life – this film.
For his part ‘The Cable Guy’ (TCG from here) does what the desperate and socially inept do. He makes a selective assumption and immediately decides that he and Steve are to be best buds. And like The Roommate and Single White Female before it he doesn’t understand why his needy and obnoxious smothering is not instantly and gratefully reciprocated.
None of this would be so bad if it wasn’t all so bad. As the overly intense dick with a speech impediment Carrey gets to do all of the Carrey things that made audiences love him in the mid 90s, only with undertones that unsettle more than thrill. Put simply it’s hard to laugh when the inappropriate acts are more menacing and disturbing than merely inappropriate.
In any case not much of this awful 96 minutes would be funny in any setting.
But while it is not the right setting at least Carrey tries. It might be unpopular to suggest but I thought Broderick was TERRIBLE as the gormless Steve, who only wants to get girlfriend Lesley Mann back and TCG gone. Broderick’s Steve is all too pitiful and ineffectual to do either, his performance so timid and aggravating that I am sure Jason Bateman took notes.
Amazingly Jack Black might be the only actor walking out of this with his head high, even more astonishingly as his was the most grounded of all performances. Then again, maybe he was studying Jim Carrey for examples of over the toppery that he has subsequently converted into millions for himself.
These films don’t exist without certain leaps of logic – we are expected to forgive certain flaws and flubs – but they shouldn’t exist without laughs.
Jim Carrey was funny before this film, he was kinda funny after. He’s just so not funny here.
The Cable Guy is too serious for all the stupidity that goes on, and too stupid for all the seriousness.
Final Rating – 4 / 10. It might be an ambitious (albeit misguided) effort, but is impossible to love. Which for most only leaves one option. And in my opinion this is one case where the universal hate is appropriate.
