Son of the Mask Movie Review:


Most sequels pale in comparison to the original, but this is ridiculous. While The Mask was 1994's surprising guilty pleasure, this long-in-the-making follow-up is one of the most painfully misguided movies in memory.

Tim Avery (Kennedy) is a wannabe animator who lives in a cartoonish house with his adorably perky wife Tonya (Howard). She wants a baby; he wants to remain irresponsibly goofy. Then their precocious dog Otis finds the lost mask of Loki (Cumming), Norse god of mischief, who's desperate to get it back. The hitch is that Tim and Tonya conceive their son (Falconer and Falconer) while Tim is wearing the mask, which means that Alvey is born with Loki's shape-shifting, trouble-causing powers.

Actually, the film starts promisingly, with a hilarious visit to a museum in which a curator (the bone-dry Stein) narrates the back-story and has an early encounter with Loki. But our laughter stops the moment the special effects kick in, because they go right over the top into meaningless mayhem. And it gets worse as the contrived story kicks in, replacing logic and characters with soulless computer-generated wackiness.

In the first film, when Jim Carrey put on the mask, his face went rubbery and silly. Here, poor Kennedy becomes a stiffly grinning, plastic-faced mannequin devoid of personality. Cumming gets lost in the swirling pyrotechnics. And Hoskins (as Loki's father Odin) gets lost in his overwrought make-up. Even the dog, easily the film's best actor, gets replaced by gonzo CGI. What's left is manic nuttiness devoid of plot or character. And it makes no sense. What struggling animator lives in a palatial suburban mansion? Without a computer? Why doesn't Tonya ever notice her son's odd behaviour? What kind of sadists name their son Alvey Avery?

It's unlikely that we'll see another film that goes so rapidly downhill. If the staggeringly awful rendition of Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (I Love You Baby) doesn't make your flesh crawl, just wait for the offensive Mr Mom montage. Or the gut-wrenchingly yucky moral messages piled on at the end. Staggeringly awful.



Rich Cline

For centuries Loki’s (Cumming) mask has been causing havoc on Earth but Norse God Odin (Hoskins) has grown tired of sorting out the mess that it has caused. So he tells his youngest son that he must receive the mask or be banished to Earth to life the mortal life. Meanwhile Tim (Kennedy) was still extremely apprehensive about having a baby but it is all his wife Tonya (Howard) can talk about. This all changes on Halloween when Tim goes to his company party with a mask that his dog found floating in the river. After partying all night, filled with the confidence and a green face, Tim returns to the loving arms of his wife. Nine months later they have a little boy named Alvey (Falconer), who starts to show same power as Tim did while wearing the mask.

Over ten years have passed since Jim Carrey donned Loki’s mischievous mask and Hollywood has decided continue the story but this sequel is far from ‘Smoking!’

After throwing the mask into the Edge City River at the end of the first movie, it finds itself in the Avery household and the highjinx begin all over again, or so the filmmakers would like us to believe. This is one of the worst conceived and executed sequels to hit the silver screen.

While the idea of bringing the Mask back to the big screen may have sounded like a fantastic idea, even though it was probably seven years too late, the filmmakers behind the project have completely forgotten what made the first film such a firm hit, its characters and the performances of the actors that played them. Jim Carrey might not have been the mega star he is now in 1994 but he had the screen presence and the comic talent to make The Mask such a memorable character. Now we have Jamie Kennedy in the lead role and basically, he just isn’t talented enough to pull the role off. Known primarily at the movie geek from the Scream movies and for his hidden camera TV show, Kennedy has absolutely no screen presence or charisma to make you like his character in the slightest. He is truly appalling.

As for the rest of the cast, the terrible script lets down some really talented actors. Alan Cumming is a gifted character actor and has proved this in many a big and small budget film. As the mischievous Norse God Loki, you couldn’t have thought of a better actor to play the role but he is seriously let down by a script that doesn’t begat his talents. The same can be side about Bob Hoskins, who plays Odin. Both of these actors deserve much better than this.

As well as the appalling script, the special effects are not even as good as the first film. The computer generated Alvey is so obviously a visual effect that is makes think that computer technology has stood still or even gone backwards for people involved in the Mask universe. As effects get more and more realistic, it is extremely hard to understand how a movie like this can look so poor.

‘Son of the Mask’ is one of the worst sequels ever made and a repugnant film is its own right. Fans of the original will be completely repulsed by this and those of you who haven’t seen the first one, don’t let this pile of garbage put you off watching the original.

Jamie Kelwick

Can anyone out there even remember how long it’s been since the original Mask film arrived in theatres? Well think of it this way. Jim Carrey was just starting to make a splash on the big screen and a little unknown actress named Cameron Diaz was cast as his love interest. The year was 1994.

Flash forward 11 painful years later and what are we left with. Probably the worst comic-book movie ever conceived and quite possibly the worst film I have seen in 5 years of covering the silver screen. It is that bad.

The sequel which bares little resemblance to the original finds Loki (Alan Cumming), creator of the Mask, banished to Earth to find his mask that has caused so much mischief. Loki’s father Odin (Bob Hoskins) is keeping a close eye on his disappointment of a son.

Meanwhile, cartoonist and would-be animator Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy) is struggling to start a family with his eager wife, Tonya (Traylor Howard). Tim wants a big promotion at work before they have the baby Tonya has always wanted.

To make a long story short, Tim acquires the powers of the Mask and wows the big-wigs at work. After he scores big at work, Tim rushes home to make love to his wife but forgets to take off the mask. Thus we get “The Son of the Mask”.

Will Loki find Tim and his new son and finally regain his former glory and more importantly the mask? Will Tim ever find a happy ending?

Ok so the film has a plot, well, sort of.

What makes “Son of the Mask” so utterly painful to watch is how much it insults the audience that is watching this train wreck of a film. Every low-brow bathroom joke, bodily function and other things I don’t want to mention are passed off as rip-roaring comedy.

There is a sort of zany cartoon element to the child in the film who faces off against a “Mask-enhanced” dog for the father’s affection. But the whole scenario is so out of this world that it belongs in a cartoon. The scenario being played out in real-life and CGI just seems utterly wrong.

I can say for a fact there wasn’t anything I liked in this film. The acting was awful, the effects were in poor taste and nothing was funny.

I would suggest that if you have to relive the adventures of the Mask, stay home, lock the door, microwave some popcorn and rent the original. I shudder to think some people actually wanted to see this flick.

So Says the Soothsayer

Dean Kish

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