PLOT SYNOPSIS:

Steven Kovacs, just spit from his girlfriend, finds himself the center of attention from his cable TV installer, Chip Doulgas. At first Steven feels sympathy for the lonely, unusual Chip, but the cable guy's overbearing attempts at friendship becomes too much to take. Attempting to distance himself from Chip, Steven only makes matters worse, and his life takes a downward spin, thanks to the cable guy.

JANEANES CHARACTER:

Okay. So, it's a cameo. Doesn't mean it's not a great role. She's Melinda, the "serving wench" at the surreal Medieval Times restaurant. Wearing an appropriate outfit, Janeane's both funny and cute. The character doesn't appear to be enjoying her career choice, and she plays it well. Her final line, directed at Matthew Broderick, is one of the funniest things in the movie.

MY REVIEW:

**1/2

Stiller's much talked about movie is not the disaster everyone seems to think it was. Many of the critics proclaimed it Carrey's best (and certainly most intelligent) film up until The Truman Show came along. But in my opinion, it's a frustrating mixture of clever ideas and visual gags, and clumsy, predictable comedy. The basic storyline...hero stalked by deranged weirdo...is mostly unimaginative and obvious, the sort of thing we've seen in scores of thrillers. Carrey appears in all areas of Chip's life, ruins his personal life, gets him fired, put in prison, etc. Seen it before...frequently. 

Far more interesting is the subplot, a vicious shot at television and how much it dominates our lives. There's plenty of smart injokes, and a handful of cameos that make the audience sit up and pay attention. An excellent running gag is the televised trial of a former child actor (director Stiller himself) who brutually murders his twin brother. The subplot, and the reasons for Chip's mental state, are meant as a searing indictment of the medium of television. Stiller and writer Lou Holtz, Jr., gets their points across clearly, but its a shame that the rest of the film isn't nearly as successful. An ambitious, interesting but ultimately flawed movie.

TV Guide:

Much of this dark farce, about the chaos that erupts when a buttoned-down milksop (Matthew Broderick) slips the Cable Guy (Jim Carrey) 50 bucks for free premium service, verges on the unwatchable; it's an uneasy hybrid of vulgar slapstick and nightmarish comedy-of-mortification, and its modest ambitions are entirely subordinate to Carrey's manic mugging and capering. But it soars above the plebian rudeness of DUMB AND DUMBER by virtue of a few moments of excoriating brilliance.

Although first-time writer Lou Holtz Jr.'s awkward script could easily have been played for light laughs, director Ben Stiller (REALITY BITES) consistently brings out its darkest implications. One keenly edited sequence intercuts Carrey's vigorously lewd karaoke rendering of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" with Broderick's seduction by a wanton young woman (Misa Koprova). At once amusing and appropriately discomfiting, it's a perfectly balanced construct that could be toppled by a single false cut, and isn't. Carrey's Cable Guy, his personality formed entirely by TV, is the neediest nerd of all time, and his dismantling of Broderick's ordered life is in the classic tradition of anarchic comedy, complete with undercurrents of class-based hostility and homoerotic menace. A cruel clown, Carrey puts the belligerent libido back in the sexless spazz character perfected by Jerry Lewis, and exploits teasing as the socially condoned form of torture it is. In all, about a third of the film (most of it contained in three extended sequences) is audaciously funny and genuinely disturbing. The rest will sorely test the devotion of Carrey's fans. --Maitland McDonagh