Summer of ‘94: The Mask
Still sssssssmokin?
It’s cliche to say this, as it was probably noted in every single review in July 1994, but it’s true: despite all the CGI assistance, The Mask’s greatest special effect is Jim Carrey.
The star’s second leading role – coming just six months after Ace Ventura: Pet Detective – was promoted as a chance to see the comedian go completely off the leash (not that restraint was the problem with Ace Ventura). As a character with supernatural powers, Carrey could be as bonkers and crazy as he dreamed, stretching his rubber face as far as possible. This was his opportunity to prove that Ace wasn’t a fluke and that he was ready to assume the throne as America’s favorite funnyman.
And he did. Bringing in $117 million at the box office, it was Carrey’s second consecutive box office success of the year – and it wasn’t even his biggest hit from 1994. That would come in December. The Mask confirmed Carrey as a leading man – two years later, he’d command $20 million for The Cable Guy – and was one of the few non-Batman comic book movies to be a box office success in the 1990s.
It’s probably no surprise that I loved The Mask. I was 15 when it was released and, much like Carrey’s other films, it was pitched directly at my demographic. Energetic, silly and proudly crude, Carrey was crowned the king of comedy by immature boys just like myself. I saw this at least twice in theaters and watched it constantly on VHS. My best friend at the time watched it every day; one of my favorite memories from that time is walking to his house on the way to school only for him to walk out belting the lyrics to “Cuban Pete.” I incorporated the film’s catchphrases into my lingo; I perfected my “ssssssmokin’.” As with many teenage boys of the 1990s, I developed a crush on Cameron Diaz.
And, as is the case with so many of these Summer of 1994 movies, I hadn’t seen the film in close to 30 years. I was so fond of it as a kid that I was scared to revisit it; after all, Ace Ventura aged, as I said, like milk. Would The Mask also curdle? I sat down recently to find out
Mr. Nice Guy
The Mask is based on a Dark Horse comic about a young man who discovers a magic mask that brings out his darkest impulses and equips him with supernatural abilities to indulge his anger and mete out revenge. It was an ultraviolet, bleak book. And while I’m sure the material could work as a horror movie, New Line had the correct impulse when they asked for the script to be a bit lighter when it transitioned to cinema.
In the movie, Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) is a mild-mannered pushover, toiling away in a low-paid position at the local bank. Women walk all over him, his boss takes credit for his work, his best friend leaves him high and dry at a nightclub. When a beautiful woman shows interest in him, it’s just so she can case the bank for her mobster boyfriend. At night, he puts on one of his pairs of ludicrous pajamas and watches cartoons.
One evening, thinking he’s spotted a man drowning in the river, Stanley jumps in, only to find that it’s a bundle of garbage containing an old wooden mask. When he puts it on, he transforms into a green-faced prankster who bounces around with manic glee, pulls weapons out of thin air and heals immediately. Like in the comics, the mask unleashes and supercharges the wearer’s inner id; because Stanley is so cartoon-obsessed, it turns him into a living, breathing Tex Avery cartoon whose eyes bug out of his head when he sees a pretty girl and who pancakes on the ground and reinflates himself after falling from great heights. It also fills Stanley with a newfound confidence, and he charges into a local nightclub to get the girl, which also puts him on the bad side of the gangsters and the local police.
Somebody, stop him!
Revisiting Ace Ventura earlier this year, I found Carrey’s character to be one of the most abrasive and unlikeable heroes ever put at the center of a movie. A good comedy can be created around a repulsive protagonist – Will Ferrell has made a career out of it – but there has to be some redeeming quality to the character, or the movie must acknowledge that the character’s behavior is funny because it’s repulsive and off-putting to everyone around.
The Mask is instantly more successful than Ace Ventura because Carrey is allowed to play a sympathetic human being. He probably still mugs a bit too much as Stanley in his non-Mask form – to be fair, I don’t know that Carrey has ever been fully successful playing an unremarkable guy, except for maybe Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Truman Show – but Carrey plays up the niceness and loneliness without making Stanley desperate or off-putting. He’s the type of guy who will buy concert tickets for a lady and then shrug it off when she asks if she can take a friend instead, and who chokes down any retorts when his landlady berates him. His scenes with Diaz, as Tina, the lounge singer he develops a crush on, are sweet and clumsy, and a local reporter (Amy Yasbeck) reveals that a lonely “Nice Guys Finish Last” letter Stanley submitted to the paper has touched the hearts of many women. Stanley’s a nice guy, and Carrey acquits himself well in the moments where he plays a genuine human being.
Unlike Ace, The Mask is never supposed to be an admirable character. He’s a force of chaotic energy, and Stanley’s dilemma is how to resist using him to get what he wants. The Mask is set up first and foremost as a shtick delivery system for Carrey; his comedic energy fuels the film. And it’s still impressive to see him move with such unflagging speed, showing a Robin Williams-esque knack for bouncing between impressions and literally climbing the walls to keep audiences laughing. Some of it hasn’t aged well – the scene where The Mask basically tries to force himself on Tina like a PG-13 Pepe La Pew is pretty gross – but much of the performance is paced with a cartoon energy, allowing Carrey to mug for the camera, bend the walls of reality and command the screen. In one sequence, he turns the tables on some thugs by quickly turning into a carnival barker who fashions a tommy gun out of balloons (unlike his comic book counterpart, though, Stanley just scares them off). In the scene I remembered most fondly as a kid, he outwits the police by performing a dance number and skedaddling in the midst of a conga line. That moment is still a lot of fun, mainly because of how Carrey revels in his own Bugs Bunny-ness. I don’t know that there’s anything clever or revelatory about his comedy here, aside from that inexhaustible energy, but I understand why teenage me loved it so much. It’s pitched right at me, and Carrey’s comedic energy is a force to be reckoned with.
One of the behind-the-scenes stories I remember clearly from The Mask’s release is that the plan was to originally use a lot more CGI to make the title character more expressive. But Carrey’s movements were already so elastic that they decided to simply paint his face green and give him a set of giant chompers. The CGI is an accent to some of the more outlandishly cartoon moments – when Stanley howls like a wolf watching Tina perform or having his eyes bug out in terror, for instance – but it’s more restrained than I remembered. Like I said earlier, he’s the real special effect, and I imagine your enjoyment will be based on how endearing or irritating you find him. Thirty years later, I still got a kick out of watching Carrey go nuts, although the catchphrases seem a bit desperate (then again, like Peter Parker’s dark side in Spider-Man 3, I think what Stanley deems cool is supposed to be a bit dorky and anachronistic). At 15, I thought lines like “Smmmmokin” or “P-A-R-T…Y? Because I gotta” were the heights of comedy; watching it again, I just wished Carrey would stop talking and do more physical shtick.
Trying to keep up
The rest of the film struggles to keep pace with its central performance. Certainly, with one exception, the cast just can’t capture the energy of Carrey’s work. Peter Greene affects a macho posture as the film’s villain, but it’s a bit too try-hard, and he weirdly seems on the verge of tears in several scenes. When he steals the mask and becomes a hulking evil version of himself late in the film, it feels sweaty compared to the ease of Carrey’s performance. Amy Yasbeck is fun early on as a reporter with a crush on Stanley, but her heel turn late in the film never really works. Peter Liegert is fun as the police detective on Stanley’s trail, and I like that he’s more befuddled than goofy (he sells the hell out of the throwaway line “someone stole your pajamas?” midway through the film). But he also seems too grounded a character for the over-the-top world in which the film takes place. Richard Jeni is amiable enough, but can’t escape a “Wal-Mart Tom Arnold” vibe.
The exception is Diaz, making her movie debut. While her looks played a part in landing the role – she was discovered coming out of a modeling job – Diaz had a flare for comedy, which is why she was such a delight throughout her career. She understands how to play the sexpot, but I like that she also seems to genuinely like Stanley and has a sweet side. Diaz truly shines in a dance sequence with The Mask, matching her co-star for vibrancy and joy. She’s basically a damsel for the rest of the movie, but that scene shows a comedic understanding that helped make Diaz a star for so many years.
I lied, because there’s one more performance that steals the show, that of the pup playing Stanley’s dog, Milo. Maybe it’s just because that we have a dog who’s part Boston terrier – Milo’s breed – but the movie perked up for me anytime Milo was on the screen. I particularly liked the moment he broke Stanley out of jail, but the movie also gets some good laughs from a sequence where Milo dons the mask to fight the bad guys in the finale. Yes, Mask Milo lifting his legs on gangsters is an obvious joke, but something about the CGI dog head really elevates the film’s cartoon appeal.
The film’s design is fun, bringing the art deco look that all comic book movies required in a post-Batman world. Rather than revel in film noir shadows, however, like Dick Tracy or The Shadow, the design is sunnier and more fantastical, fitting in the age of the Tex Avery cartoons Stanley loves so much. Its biggest location is the Coco Bongo Club, the nightclub where Tina works and several of the Mask set pieces take place. It’s a fun location for the Mask to burst into with his zoot suit, and capitalizes on that six-month period in the ‘90s where everyone suddenly had a fondness for Swing music. Director Chuck Russell wasn’t a stranger to effects-heavy movies; he was the director of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, a high point of that franchise. And he knows how to incorporate the CGI without letting it overwhelm the film, although he seems a bit lost in the quieter moments. I can’t help but wonder what a more visually energetic director like Sam Raimi or Joe Dante might have done with this material, but Russell understands his job is basically to let everyone else get out of Carrey’s way.
I don’t love The Mask, especially in the way I did as a teen. But I was glad to revisit it and see that while it’s entirely forgettable, it’s also fun. It provides a great showcase for Carrey at his prime without making me feel gross for laughing, which I can’t say about Ace Ventura. I’m a little anxious about revisiting Dumb and Dumber in a few months, as it was definitely on my Mount Rushmore for comedy in my teens and twenties. But after revisiting The Mask, I’m more hopeful that it might still draw out some laughs.
Note: We’re only going to have one more Summer of ‘94 entry, and it’s coming near the end of this month. That’s because the pickings are pretty slim — as much as I like writing about junk, I don’t think I have it in me to tackle Airheads, Blankman, It’s Pat or Police Academy: Mission to Moscow.
But because I love doing these series, tune in later this week for the first entry in a series spanning the rest of the year as we jump ahead five years and look at 1999…aka, the Best Fall Ever (starting with a few August entries).