Review: Son of the Mask

Posted by: Dean Kish  •  February 18, 2005 @ 11:59am

Filed under: Reviews

Can anyone out there even remember how long it's been since the original Mask film arrived in theatres? Well think of it this way â€" Jim Carrey was just starting to make a splash on the big screen and a little unknown actress named Cameron Diaz was cast as his love interest. The year was 1994.

Flash forward 11 painful years later and what are we left with? Probably the worst comic-book movie ever conceived and quite possibly the worst film I have seen in 5 years of covering the silver screen. It is that bad.

The sequel, which bares little resemblance to the original finds Loki (Alan Cumming), creator of the mask, banished to Earth to find his mask that has caused so much mischief. Loki's father Odin (Bob Hoskins) is keeping a close eye on his disappointment of a son.

Meanwhile, cartoonist and would-be animator Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy) is struggling to start a family with his eager wife, Tonya (Traylor Howard). Tim wants a big promotion at work before they have the baby Tonya has always wanted.

To make a long story short, Tim acquires the powers of the mask and wows the big-wigs at work. After he scores big at work, Tim rushes home to make love to his wife but forgets to take off the mask. Thus we get "The Son of the Mask".

Will Loki find Tim and his new son and finally regain his former glory and more importantly the mask? Will Tim ever find a happy ending?

Okay, so the film has a plot, well, sort of.

What makes Son of the Mask so utterly painful to watch is how much it insults the audience that is watching this train wreck of a film. Every low-brow bathroom joke, bodily function, and other things I don't want to mention are passed off as rip-roaring comedy.

There is a sort of zany cartoon element to the child in the film who faces off against a "mask-enhanced" dog for the father's affection. But the whole scenario is so out of this world that it belongs in a cartoon. The scenario being played out in real-life and CGI just seems utterly wrong.

I can say for a fact there wasn't anything I liked in this film. The acting was awful, the effects were in poor taste, and nothing was funny.

I would suggest that if you have to relive the adventures of the mask, stay home, lock the door, microwave some popcorn, and rent the original. I shudder to think some people actually wanted to see this flick. (0 out of 5) So Says the Soothsayer.