In theaters

THE NUMBER 23, directed by Joel Schumacher, written by Fernley Phillips, 95 minutes, rated R.

Pick a number, any number, though preferably not “The Number 23.”

The latest psychological thriller from director Joel Schumacher is a mess that would love to scare the No. 2 out of you, but forget it. The film is an incomprehensible joke, with Fernley Phillips’ cliche-ridden script derailing it, as does the feverish acting by Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen, the latter of whom has yet to make a memorable movie since 2004’s “Sideways.”

The film stars Carrey as dogcatcher Walter Sparrow, who becomes obsessed by the number 23 after his wife, Aggie (Madsen), buys him an unpublished book she finds at a used bookstore.

The book features a detective named Fingerling who sees the number 23 as a curse. Not surprisingly, Walter starts to do the same, likely because weird things start to happen to him and particularly since he and Fingerling have so much in common. Carrey, after all, plays Fingerling in the heavily stylized flashbacks, with a tawdry Madsen tarted up in a black wig to play sluttish Fabrizia, the girlfriend Fingerling murders.

As Walter succumbs to the encroaching madness, one’s questions about whether Aggie will suffer the same fate as Fabrizia are put on the fast track when Walter starts dreaming about stabbing her to death. As a concerned Aggie herself notes to the increasingly freaked-out Walter, “You’ve concerned yourself with minutiae and you’ve drawn wild conclusions from them!”

The film follows suit, with Schumacher and Phillips manufacturing every conceivable connection to the number 23.

Since the movie finds demonic qualities attached to the number, Charles Manson and Hitler naturally factor into the figure, but so do the Mayans, Shakespeare, Kurt Cobain (!), the Latin alphabet, the dropping of the atomic bomb, Walter’s own past, and countless other connections. What’s the significance behind all the hallucinatory hooey the movie courts? Since that leads to a last-minute twist, we’ll leave the muddled, unsatisfying results for you.

At this point, it’s safe to say that Carrey has reached a turning point. In some ways, breaking free from the dumb comedies that have defined so much of his career has proved more difficult to do than, say, burying Anna Nicole Smith. But that’s what happens when money is your first consideration, not quality, which the former long has been for Carrey.

On one level, the actor’s difficult transition into more mature roles isn’t unlike the challenges facing a child star trying to break into the adult arena. Tough to do, as Carrey has found out. With the right material, he can be very good, as he was in “The Truman Show” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but with the wrong dramatic material – and “The Number 23” is the wrong material, as was the awful “The Majestic” – he tries so hard to connect with crap that the result, not surprisingly, is just that.

Grade: D

On DVD

BORAT, directed by Larry Charles, written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer, 89 minutes, rated R.

In the brash, funny mockumentary “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the question isn’t whether we should be offended by Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen), who comes from Kazakhstan armed with a motherlode of anti-Semitism and crude malapropisms.

Instead, the movie’s twist – and its genius, really – is whether we should pity those real-life Americans tricked by Cohen, who is Jewish, into revealing some rather telling sides of themselves, such as whether they are anti-Semites, homophobes, misogynists, bigots, racists, you name it.

The film builds its story of deceit around Borat, a likable wreck whom we first see enthusiastically showing us around his muddy village. There, he introduces us to the town’s rapist (“Naughty, naughty!”), passionately kisses a woman we later learn is his sister (“She the fourth most popular prostitute in Kazakhstan! Sexytime!”), and enters his home, which he apparently shares with the family cow.

This also is a place that features the popular event “The Running of the Jew,” which likely is one reason that the government of Kazakhstan officially condemned the film. The same can’t be said for North American audiences, who got the joke (or was the joke on them?), and turned this Academy Award-nominated movie into a box-office smash.

The film’s slim premise goes like this – Borat is charged by his country to travel to the United States with his producer, Azamat (Ken Davitian), to make an informative documentary that presumably will allow Kazakhstan to benefit from all that we’ve learned. But not so fast. It’s in New York that he comes upon the television show “Baywatch” and falls in love with Pamela Anderson. Shifting gears, Borat decides to go cross-country to California, where he hopes to realize his own American dream and convince Anderson to marry him.

What ensues is a nest of vignettes in which Cohen nudges himself into pockets of our culture that some would sooner wish to forget, such as Alan Keyes or conservative radio host Bob Barr, each of whom is skewered. Another scene finds Borat, dressed in patriotic flair, drawing cheers at a Virginia rodeo when he applauds President Bush for his “war of terror!” The crowd goes wild. And let’s not forget the vendor who is asked by Borat which gun would be perfect for killing a Jew – and then, incredibly, the man shows him exactly which one he’d use. Revealing? Yes – but funny, too.

Grade: B+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays and Fridays in Lifestyle, weekends in Television as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.

The Video/DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? BDN film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Akeelah and the Bee – B+

Annapolis – C-

The Ant Bully – B+

Babel – A-

Basic Instinct 2 – D+

The Black Dahlia – C-

Borat – B+

Breakfast on Pluto – B

The Break-Up – B

Cars – C

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 – C-

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – A

Clerks II – B+

Click – C-

The Constant Gardener – A-

The Covenant – D

Crank – B+

Curious George – B

Date Movie – D-

The Da Vinci Code – C+

The Departed – A

The Descent – B+

The Devil Wears Prada – B+

Double Indemnity – A

Employee of the Month – C

Failure to Launch – C-

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift – B

Flushed Away – B+

Flyboys – C-

Freedomland – C-

Friends with Money – B

Full Monty: Fully Exposed Edition – B+

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties – C+

The Golden Girls: Seventh Season – A-

The Gridiron Gang – C+

The Grudge 2 – D-

Half Nelson – A-

A History of Violence – A

Hollywoodland – C

How Art Made the World – A

The Illusionist – B+

Inside Man – B+

Invincible – B

Jackass Number Two – B

Junebug – A

Kinky Boots – B+

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – B+

Ladder 49 Blu-ray – B

Last Holiday – B

The Libertine – D

Literary Classics Collection – B+

Little Miss Sunshine – B+

Lucky Number Slevin – B

Magnum P.I.: Seventh Season – C+

The Marine – C+

Match Point – A

Miami Vice – C

Mission Impossible III – C-

Monster House – B+

Munich – A-

My Super Ex-Girlfriend – A-

Nacho Libre – C

North Country – C

The Omen – B-

Open Season – B

Over the Hedge – B

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – B-

Poseidon – B

A Prairie Home Companion – C

The Prestige – B+

Rumor Has It… – C-

Running with Scissors – C+

Secret Agent A.K.A. Danger Man: Complete Collection – A

Shakespeare Behind Bars – A-

Shut Up & Sing – A-

16 Blocks – B

Slither – B

Snakes On A Plane: A-

Stay Alive – D-

Superman Returns – C+

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – B

This Film is Not Yet Rated – B-

United 93 – A

V for Vendetta – B+

The Wicker Man – BOMB

World Trade Center – A

X-Men: The Last Stand – B-

You, Me and Dupree – C-