Distributed by
Pioneer LDCE

Cat.no: PLFEB 36571

Cert: PG

Running time: 97 minutes

Sides: 2 (CLV)

Year: 1994

Pressing: 1997

Chapters: 31 (1-18, 19-31)

Sound: Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 1.85:1

Price: £24.99

Extras : None

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Director:

Charles Russell (Nightmare On Elm Street III, The Blob, Eraser)

Cast:

Jim Carrey (Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, The Cable Guy, Liar Liar)
Cameron Diaz (The Last Supper, My Best Friend's Wedding, A Life Less Ordinary)
Peter Riegert
Peter Greene
Amy Yasbeck
Richard Jeni

One of the strongest Dark Horse comics (Timecop, Barb Wire) franchises, The Mask concerns a green mask which, when put on by various characters, projects their innermost selves onto their outward persona. Readers of the comic will know that anyone can and does put on the Mask - a bank clerk, his girlfriend, gangsters, and so forth.

In translation to a Hollywood movie, where The Star Is All, the movie has been built around then-unknown comedian Jim Carrey - and, as such, spends far more time on his character Stanley Ipkiss' mask-wearing variant than on others. The main girl Diaz doesn't even get a look in (what would she have turned into - Jessica Rabbit??!! - one can only speculate, alas.)

Anyway, as the movie stands, Carrey is Ipkiss, the sort of guy who's so nice that he gets two impossible-to-obtain show tickets then gives them both to the girl he fancies so she can take her girlfriend. In fact, he's generally so accommodating to his bank work mates and superiors that they walk all over him. All of which changes when - "STOP ME!!" - he puts on the Mask and whirls Tazmanian Devil style (check out that cushion on Stanley's sofa) into an snappily besuited, lime green-faced man about town with all the right lines and all the right moves.

Meanwhile, in the best debut entrance into the movies of any starlet in recent years, Cameron "Killer At Three O'Clock (and that's a chapter title)" Diaz walks into the bank (to case it for her gangster boyfriend) and straight into Stanley's dreams. The whole thing plays like a minor romantic comedy, except...

All the stuff with the Mask itself is really rather good, even if it knowingly rips off images from Tex Avery (a video of whose celebrated and hilarious cartoon shorts Stanley watches the first time we see him at home) - Carrey's caricatured tiptoeing up to the landlady's door, for instance, only to pull an impossibly large hammer from his suit pocket and smash a ringing alarm clock to pieces.

Then there's a whole nightclub with singer and bemasked Carrey howling at a table, eyes popping out of his heart, heart out of his stomach, taken straight out of Avery's wonderfully subversive Red Riding Hood cartoons - acknowledged by Carrey's head here being momentarily reconfigured as that of the wolf. For the rest, there's a couple of amazing song and dance numbers including one where the bemasked Carrey dances with a line of cops preparing to shoot him!

A couple of other characters do don the Mask: a gangster turns even nastier than he was before and - far more importantly - Carrey's heroic dog into a green-headed, butt-biting mongrel. The dog, incidentally, gets the best scene in the film when he heroically jumps up to his imprisoned master's cell window. Generally, though, the script dwells on Stanley/Carrey, which seems a wasted opportunity. Who knows - perhaps in The Mask II?

Still, the movie remains by far director Russell's most impressive to date. It's also a great choice for laserdisc because the set design is gorgeous (note the pan down the neon sign on the nightclub establishing shot), the seamlessly integrated effects look wonderful, the surround sound mix (which like Carrey, whizzes around the place at breakneck speed) is to die for - and - to cap it all, it's a hugely enjoyable affair for adults and (surprisingly) kids alike.

Side break is fine as is chaptering (if there were a best Chapter Title award, "Killer at Three O'Clock" would get MY vote) although the chaptering could be greatly improved by doubling the number of chapters. Not that it's short of them, but twice the number would be a great improvement. Perhaps its because it's such a snappily paced film with so much going on in different scenes.

Like other Pioneer/Entertainment discs, however, the sleeve notes are pretty paltry and there are no extras whatever despite over twenty potential spare minutes on side two, not even a trailer. A documentary on ILM's effects or Avery would have been nice. Still, The Mask is a good title, a generally good disc and will probably sell like hot cakes. SMOKIN'!

Film: 4/5
Picture: 5/5
Sound: 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1998.