The Cable Guy

THE CABLE GUY (MOVIE)
Columbia Pictures

Original release: June 14th, 1996
Running time: 96 minutes

Director: Ben Stiller
Writers: Lou Holtz Jr.

Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, Jack Black

1994 was Jim Carrey’s Annus Mirablis. Although previously known for stand up work and the odd cookie cameo in films like Clint Eastwood’s The Dead Pool (1988) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Carrey’s rise felt like an overnight success as he scored commercial and critical acclaim with Ace Venture: Pet Detective, Dumb And Dumber and The Mask, all released in 1994.

His stature saw him cast as the Riddler in Batman Forever the following year as well as another blockbuster, the critically reviled Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

Carrey could now make demands and his $20 million pay day on The Cable Guy was widely reported along with rumours about a production out of control, with script changes and superstar behaviour behind the scenes. The film on release was regarded as a misfire, a flop that saw Carrey scuttle back to more straightforward comic fare in Liar, Liar, his next release, but the film did actually make a profit and has attained status as a darkly interesting note in a career that consistently veers from the pot holed road of big budget Hollywood comedy to the occasional pit stop of serious acting, first seen in Peter Weir’s magnificent The Truman Show (1998).

The Cable Guy and The Truman Show are in the same thematic territory, even if generically they couldn’t be more different. Hollywood has a habit of criticizing the media by taking aim at television. Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) and The Truman Show are the best examples of this.

The Cable Guy combines a satire of the power of television with what could be called friendship horror, seen a few years earlier in Barbet Shroeder’s Single White Female (1992). Matthew Broderick is Steven Kovaks, a thirty-something who’s frightened off his girlfriend Robin (Leslie Mann) with a marriage proposal and is now living on his own, and going through a crisis.

Following advice from his friend Rick (Jack Black), Steven bribes the cable guy, ‘Chip’ Douglas, to give him free cable. Chip takes this as an overture to friendship and, declaring Steven a preferred customer, proceeds, by fair means or foul, to cement Steven’s friendship and make himself a part of Steven’s life.

There is, somewhere in the film, a good comedy trying to get out, but Jim Carrey’s performance as Jim Carrey effectively capsizes the movie. The scene in which Chip invites himself to Steven’s basketball game with his work mates and effectively sabotages it seems like an inscribed critique of what is wrong with the whole film.

What begins as a moment of awkward social comedy becomes a comic set piece with Stiller over-directing, using slow motion and giving Carrey’s gurning physical comedy superhuman powers. Chip ruins the game as effectively as Carrey ruins the scene. There’s something distinctly meta about the young Jack Black’s look of consternation. The film feels like its structured as a musical with a series of these set pieces, all played at eleven, taking the place of the songs—Owen Wilson getting beaten up in a bathroom, the Medieval Times fight, the Karaoke contest—but the set pieces are obviously set pieces, opportunities for Carrey to riff, with lots of impressions and quotes but surprisingly few jokes.

There’s something unbelievable about these scenes, as if they were parachuted in from another film, and ultimately about Chip. Why does this man, who’s so obsessed with television, never watch television? How can Chip even temporarily befriend Steven’s family when he’s behaving in such an obviously weird manner (Carrey’s charming is so obviously an over-the-top parody of charming)? Everyone else stands around while Carrey does his bit, and again Broderick’s look of confusion and irritation could easily be the actor’s own.

The line that should sum up the movie is delivered in response to Steven’s consolation to Chip that we all get lonely sometimes. ‘But I get really lonely,’ Chip responds. This should be the moment we feel for Chip, the moment we see into his genuine pain, but Bugs Bunny has more psychological interiority and Chip’s subsequent suicidal plunge is cartoonish and dishonest.

In the end the film doesn’t work as a satire on television culture—the running gag about a celebrity murder trial starring Stiller himself is played for laughs and makes no real sense—nor does it work as a character study. Chip could’ve represented what the recently dumped Steven fears he might turn into, and could’ve held some genuine pathos, but Chip isn’t a character, he’s Jim Carrey’s Karaoke opportunity, the mask from The Mask.

Perhaps it was the excess of this performance that provided Carrey with the insight and discipline to turn to a quieter version of his talent with The Truman Show and Milos Forman’s Milos Forman Man In The Moon (1999).

John Bleasdale

John Bleasdale is a writer based in Italy. He has published on films at various internet sites and his writing can be found, along with blog posts, collected at johnbleasdale.com.

He has also contributed chapters to the American Hollywood and American Independent volumes of the World Directory of Cinema: (Intellect), Terrence Malick: Films and Philosophy (Continuum) and World Film Locations: Venice (Intellect). You can also follow him on Twitter @drjonty.

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