THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
There’s crazy in all of us. If you can’t believe that, look at The Mask.
PLOT
Based on the comic book series by Doug Mahnke and John Arcudi, the film takes place in the fictional Edge City and follows bank clerk Stanley Ipkiss. He lives with his dog Milo and is ridiculed by everyone except his only friend, co worker Charlie Schumaker (Richard Jeni). In the mean time, gangster Dorian Tyrell, owner of the Coco Bongo nightclub, plans to overthrow his superior Niko (Orestes Matacena). He sends his girlfriend, nightclub singer Tina Carlyle, to record the layout of a bank he tends to rob. It is here where she meets Stanley, who quickly becomes attracted to her, in which she seems to reciprocate. By night, Ipkiss’ luck goes further down the rabbit hole when he can’t get in Coco Bongo to see her perform and his loaner car breaks down. When it does so at a harbor bridge, he finds a green wooden mask in the waters after mistaking it to be a humanoid figure. When he puts it on at his apartment, he becomes a green faced figure that can alter himself and his surroundings at will. With his newfound power, he goes through a comical rampage throughout the city by humiliating his landlady, the mechanics who loaned him a faulty car and a gang of thugs. By morning, he believes it to be a dream until Lieutenant Mitch Kellaway (Peter Riegert) and reporter Peggy Brandt (Amy Yasbeck) separately question him of the events that occurred the night of. While he keeps his tracks covered by claiming he slept through the night of the incident, he ends up using the mask again the next night. This time, he uses it to raid a bank to have enough money seeing Tina perform at Coco Bongo. However when he does so, it foils Tyrell's plotted robbery. When he attends the club, his infatuation for Tina becomes stronger that he gets to dance with her and kiss her. When Tyrell finds out that Stanley is responsible for foiling his robbery, which got his henchmen killed, he shoots at him. When he shoots his tie off, it reverts to a piece of his pajamas. The criminal gets briefly arrested by Kellaway, but the lieutenant recognizes the pajamas. This makes him question Stanley again the morning after. The protagonist only lies again by claiming someone stole his pajamas. Wanting to figure out the origin of the mask's power, he visits mask expert Arthur Neumann (Ben Stein), who pitches that maybe it originates from the Norse God of Mischief Loki. Ipkiss tries to display its power when putting it on in front of him, but nothing happens, proving to be only active at night. When Tina visits him at work again, she tells him of her encounter with the Mask. He then tells her that he knows him, arranging them to meet again at Landfill Park. When they do so at night, it goes awry when his advances scare her away and Kellaway attempts to arrest him. Stanley is able to evade the police when he finds an alley to hide and remove the mask. There, he flees with Peggy who ends up turning him over to Tyrell for a bounty. He takes the mask for himself and sends his henchmen to take the money he had stolen from the bank, before turning him over to the police. When Tina visits him at the station, she urges him to leave Edge City as she tends to do the same. She even thanks him for his natural kindness, telling him he didn't need the mask to be special. Before she could leave, she is captured by Tyrell, who plans to blow up Coco Bongo during a charity event. Luckily, Milo helps Stanley escape his cell. He then takes Kellaway hostage to make haste to Coco Bongo. When arriving at the club, he locks the lieutenant in his car and tells him to call for backup while he sneaks in. Despite getting briefly aided by Charlie, he gets caught before he could free Tina. Milo ends up donning the mask after Tina convinces Tyrell to take it off. After Stanley briefly fights him, he dons the mask one last time to swallow the explosives and literally flush Tyrell down the drain of the club's ornamental fountain. The Mayor (Ivory Ocean) ends up defending Stanley by ordering Kellaway to exonerate him and accept that Tyrell was the Mask from the beginning. The film ends the next day, showing Stanley and Tina abandon the mask at the harbor, rather than destroying it.
THOUGHTS
I have seen many films in my childhood that contains a mix of hits and misses. This one in particular is a big hit for me. Director Chuck Russell gives us an absolute blast of a movie that keeps you laughing your ass off due to its insanity that occurs throughout. Thanks to its cartoonish visual effects, it makes the whole experience entertaining. As I got older, I was able to catch a special message that only makes the movie even more special than it already is: There is a side in all of us that allows us to be our authentic selves and if you're not expressing that every so often, you're not being yourself. As long as you are true to yourself, then you are living it to the fullest. I deeply felt this through the energetic performance of Jim Carrey who is in command throughout. He shows off Stanley Ipkiss as one who is completely shy and doesn't know how to be himself. Finding the mask helped him do just that and while it wasn't what he expected, it was worth it because it helped him gain much needed confidence. Originally, he falls for Tina because of her beauty, but the more he saw her, the more he took notice of her own confidence. He chose not to destroy the mask because he knows someone else out there will likely need to find a way to release his or her inner self in the future, which is what happened in the crappy sequel, Son of the Mask. While Carrey is the star that makes this movie immortal, he is not the only one that makes it all the more memorable. Breakout Cameron Diaz makes an impact for portraying Tina Carlyle not as a damsel in distress, but as one who knows her worth and doesn't really need anyone to tell her how to live her life. She took notice of Stanley because he is the only one who naturally noticed her personality and eventually looked past her beauty. Off of that, they became a good match for each other. It's hard for comedies to have a good villain because they can be overshadowed by protagonists with ease. I don't think this is the case with Dorian Tyrell because actor Peter Greene accurately plays him as Ipkiss' polar opposite, one who isn't afraid to be himself, but does not care of the repercussions when expressing it. He is bad and was hungry to be the most powerful, which made him more dangerous. When he wore the mask, he was more demonic than Ipkiss' cartoonish perspective, which only proves that it embraces inner selves. Since the mask showed that dark side of him, it only proves how he was born bad and had no thought of change. Luckily, Edge City will feel a little bit safer with him out of the picture. This film will never not be entertaining for me, but it still doesn’t excuse the issues I’ve caught when re watching. The first of which has to be why didn’t the person before Stanley tried destroying the mask? The protagonist seems to have good reason to spare it, but if it was still in tact for magical reasons, that should’ve been explored here instead of that shitty cash grab sequel. I did slightly chuckle when Stanley’s loan pulls up in front of Tina, but why exactly does this happen? He did get thrown out before ever getting in the club, but he didn’t even call for the car in the first place. This is just an over the top way to feel bad for this guy’s humiliation. Since this movie acts like a cartoon, it made sense that there were gonna be continuity errors along the way. Like it’s fun when Stanley first wears the mask and attacks a random group of thugs, but I am so annoyed of the inconsistency during the scene where it seems to look like he’s dealing with seven of them, but then it cuts to six by the time they flee. It’s like the extra got sick and they thought I wouldn’t notice. It gets more awkward when noticing that one thug goes from being shirtless to having a shirt back on before running away. And Peggy says she is from ‘Evening Star’ when her badge says ‘Edge City Tribune’. If that is supposed to imply she has two jobs, then that is a crappy way to do it. I don’t want to call Charlie an idiot, but he should know his colors if he’s mistaking Peggy’s grey jacket to be green. And I refuse to believe he is color blind if you make a defense. On top of that, it’s kinda crazy how quick it took for Stanley to hide the money in seconds without wearing the mask. I am rooting for this guy, but we all know he can’t be that fast to hide it in front of Mitch. I think the dumbest thing he does though is is telling Tina he knows who The Mask is within an earshot away from the police who somehow don’t hear him. Of course I want him to get the girl, but that was a time the risk was not worth taking. Also, why didn’t Mitch get briefly controlled by the Mask when he controlled every other cop in his way for that hilarious dancing number? The Mask is shown to be extremely powerful, so there should be an explanation to Mitch being immune to the power. Other than that, you’ll still be having a ball. In short, The Mask is 90s comedy gold for bringing smiles from beginning to end which matters a lot in this genre. If you dire to get your smile back, this one can do it for you.
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