The Cable Guy [1996]

Blockbusting superstars often come a commercial cropper when they try to send themselves up, as Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger discovered with Hudson Hawk and Last Action Hero. In The Cable Guy, comedian Jim Carrey does something similar and courts disaster by presenting his usual rubber-faced schtick in the service of a script that presents his character as at once funny and menacing.

Adding a dose of the frightening to comedic larking-around is the equivalent of leavening all-action muscle-building with a tad too much tongue-in-cheek, and The Cable Guy is the first of Carrey's post-breakthrough movies to do only so-so business in the States. But Hudson Hawk and Last Action Hero, though flawed, strike me as being a lot more interesting and rewatchable than Last Boy Scout or Commando, and I think that The Cable Guy, though immensely flawed, will be worth a look when Ace Ventura 2 and Batman Forever have been consigned to the 'used tapes from £1.99' bin.

The first obvious change in the Carrey formula is that the star is given a 'normal' world to play off as he invades the life of junior executive Matthew Broderick, a quiet and ordinary young fellow who has been forced to move into a new apartment by a temporary break-up with his girlfriend. Carrey appears at Broderick's door as the blue-collar goon who hooks up his cable television and, when offered a bribe to get all the pay channels for free, presumes to become his new-found, limpet-like, overly eager best friend.

The film's stroke of genius is that it capitalises on the mixed feelings Carrey's antics have always aroused in audiences, with Broderick charmed and amused by the cable guy but also deeply aware of how irritating he is and of the undercurrent of dangerous madness that makes extreme clowning quite disturbing. Carrey plays an outright villain in Batman Forever, but the cartoonish context of that film rendered him less funny and a great deal less frightening than he is here.

Among the embarassments heaped on Broderick are a friendly basketball game ruined when Carrey joins in and displays a viciously knockabout streak, and there's a genuinely scary sequence as the Cable Guy - who is never named, but gives a series of aliases drawn from old-time TV series - takes it upon himself to prevent his friend's girlfriend from forming a new relationship by savagely beating up her creepy blind date in a restaurant washroom. The victim is established as a shallow swine we don't care about, but Carrey's outburst is still upsetting.

Lighter in tone is a wonderfully tacky visit to a middle ages theme restaurant where Carrey persuades Broderick to get kitted up in armour and enter gladiatorial combat while providing a running commentary about a relevant episode of Star Trek complete with vocally-produced sound effects and music. This sort of routine is Carrey's forte, and he manages another at an impromptu karaoke party as he attacks Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to Love' with a relish that goes well beyond funny into the country of the terrifying.

It is inevitable that the plot will turn, and when Broderick rejects Carrey, the Cable Guy segues from friend to persecutor, succeeding in getting the luckless ordinary joe fired from his job, in trouble with his girlfriend, imprisoned for receiving stolen goods and [almost worst of all] cut off from cable TV. The home stretches of the film, which feature a marvelously uncomfortable sequence as Carrey shows up at Broderick's family home and nudges his stuffy parents into an obscene word game, contain an inevitable cop-out as it doesn't quite go into the Stepfather-Fatal Attraction mode hinted at by a tiny film clip from Play Misty for Me and requires a major character reversal from Broderick in the final confrontation. Nevertheless, The Cable Guy is funny and scary, and offers as much pleasure to people who despise Jim Carrey as to his devoted fans.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in: The Hampstead and Highgate Express [issue unknown].

Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com