IMDb plot summary: A lonely and mentally disturbed cable guy raised on television just wants a new friend, but his target, a designer, rejects him, with bad consequences.
Directed by Ben Stiller. Starring Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, and Jack Black.
I can definitely see why people hated this. It very carefully straddles the line between comedy and thriller, and it's really not until the latter third of the movie for me that it really settles into both of those. When it does settle, though, it got a few laughs out of me (I giggled a bunch near the very end at the guy whose cable goes out and he suddenly discovers the joy of books), and it also hits a decently creepy vibe. The genres finally mesh. The first two thirds are a little bit spottier -- there aren't actually that many jokes written in, and it seems to be mostly relying on the inherent funniness of Jim Carrey's "cringey goofball" shtick, which never sits well with me. But as the movie progresses, it's easier to see it as played for horror, and it kind of works. I am intrigued that two years later, Jim Carrey would star in The Truman Show, another movie about people's dependence on television -- though that movie is in my top 10. But this settles into something I can kind of get behind, though I can't really imagine wanting to rewatch it.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Cable Guy > The Hangover
The Cable Guy < Doctor Strange
The Cable Guy < The Forest
The Cable Guy > Kung Fury
The Cable Guy > The Act of Killing
The Cable Guy < Guys and Dolls
The Cable Guy < Loving Vincent
The Cable Guy > Prometheus
The Cable Guy < Clueless
The Cable Guy > Corpse Bride
The Cable Guy < The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Final spot: #1174 out of 2929, or 60%.
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