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#243 - The Cable Guy
Ben Stiller, 1996
A recently-separated man gets cable TV installed in his new apartment but soon has to contend with the cable installer's increasingly unhinged behaviour.
I've noticed a pattern across all four of the Ben Stiller-directed films I've seen (the exception being The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which could very well fit the pattern if I ever decided to see it). All of them are comedies that are fundamentally satirical in ways that are never as clever as Stiller seems to think they are. Reality Bites was a meandering and misguided take on Generation X, Zoolander mocked the vapidity of the fashion industry, while Tropic Thunder was basically a wartime version of Three Amigos! with a few jabs at celebrity culture thrown in for good measure. The Cable Guy tends to focus its satirical energy on a culture obsessed with television, though the satire is pushed to the side in favour of a rather dark odd-couple comedy involving a strait-laced ad executive (Matthew Broderick) whose desire to get cable TV in his new apartment leads to him being suckered into a very one-sided friendship with the titular cable guy (Jim Carrey). While Broderick tolerates Carrey's weirdness at first, his attempts to resist result in Carrey pulling every trick in the manipulator's handbook in order to keep himself in Broderick's life.
Despite the film's Kafkaesque premise having some darkly comic potential and being made during the peak of Carrey's comedic career, the film squanders all its promise within its first half-hour. Carrey's turn as the cable guy - a lisping, hyperactive, reference-making string-bean of a human being - starts off funny but he wears out his welcome very quickly. Despite the film focusing on the escalation on his antics, the character sadly gets less amusing as the film progresses. It's hard to tell whether that can be credited to the film dropping its straightforward comedy premise in favour of its stalker narrative or if the joke really does wear that thin that quickly. Broderick is relegated to being little more than a straight man who spends the film's entire running time suffering various milquetoast indignities as a result of Carrey's machinations. A handful of recognisable faces pepper the rest of the film but don't do much of note, whether in terms of being funny or aiding the narrative.
Really, though, it's probably not a good thing that the film is much more effective at being a paranoia-driven thriller than it is at being a wacky comedy. It gets points for its first half-hour raising some chuckles but as things wear on it becomes more and more tiresome. What there is in the way of satire falls flat even by the fairly low standards of Stiller's other directorial efforts. The extent of it seems to be making Carrey into what Hans Gruber would probably call "another orphan of a bankrupt culture" and making him oddly sympathetic in the process - oh, yeah, and some heavy-handed condemnation of television watching thrown in to boot (especially thanks to the sensationalised celebrity murder trial that plays out in snippets throughout the film and also the sheer power Carrey commands simply by granting cable to the right people). Of course, this is all swept under the rug so we can get a load of Carrey's goofing off and Broderick's increasingly flustered reactions. One wonders if efforts to make the film any darker would have helped the film out in any significant way. Probably not, though. The Cable Guy starts off as a decent enough joke - unfortunately that joke isn't enough to sustain an entire movie.
Ben Stiller, 1996
A recently-separated man gets cable TV installed in his new apartment but soon has to contend with the cable installer's increasingly unhinged behaviour.
I've noticed a pattern across all four of the Ben Stiller-directed films I've seen (the exception being The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which could very well fit the pattern if I ever decided to see it). All of them are comedies that are fundamentally satirical in ways that are never as clever as Stiller seems to think they are. Reality Bites was a meandering and misguided take on Generation X, Zoolander mocked the vapidity of the fashion industry, while Tropic Thunder was basically a wartime version of Three Amigos! with a few jabs at celebrity culture thrown in for good measure. The Cable Guy tends to focus its satirical energy on a culture obsessed with television, though the satire is pushed to the side in favour of a rather dark odd-couple comedy involving a strait-laced ad executive (Matthew Broderick) whose desire to get cable TV in his new apartment leads to him being suckered into a very one-sided friendship with the titular cable guy (Jim Carrey). While Broderick tolerates Carrey's weirdness at first, his attempts to resist result in Carrey pulling every trick in the manipulator's handbook in order to keep himself in Broderick's life.
Despite the film's Kafkaesque premise having some darkly comic potential and being made during the peak of Carrey's comedic career, the film squanders all its promise within its first half-hour. Carrey's turn as the cable guy - a lisping, hyperactive, reference-making string-bean of a human being - starts off funny but he wears out his welcome very quickly. Despite the film focusing on the escalation on his antics, the character sadly gets less amusing as the film progresses. It's hard to tell whether that can be credited to the film dropping its straightforward comedy premise in favour of its stalker narrative or if the joke really does wear that thin that quickly. Broderick is relegated to being little more than a straight man who spends the film's entire running time suffering various milquetoast indignities as a result of Carrey's machinations. A handful of recognisable faces pepper the rest of the film but don't do much of note, whether in terms of being funny or aiding the narrative.
Really, though, it's probably not a good thing that the film is much more effective at being a paranoia-driven thriller than it is at being a wacky comedy. It gets points for its first half-hour raising some chuckles but as things wear on it becomes more and more tiresome. What there is in the way of satire falls flat even by the fairly low standards of Stiller's other directorial efforts. The extent of it seems to be making Carrey into what Hans Gruber would probably call "another orphan of a bankrupt culture" and making him oddly sympathetic in the process - oh, yeah, and some heavy-handed condemnation of television watching thrown in to boot (especially thanks to the sensationalised celebrity murder trial that plays out in snippets throughout the film and also the sheer power Carrey commands simply by granting cable to the right people). Of course, this is all swept under the rug so we can get a load of Carrey's goofing off and Broderick's increasingly flustered reactions. One wonders if efforts to make the film any darker would have helped the film out in any significant way. Probably not, though. The Cable Guy starts off as a decent enough joke - unfortunately that joke isn't enough to sustain an entire movie.