Son of the Mask (2005)

“Okay, I'm just gonna say it. That was flat out embarrassing.” – Tonya Avery, Son of the Mask

As a child, I enjoyed The Mask.  It was Jim Carrey’s version of a Looney Tunes style character.  He was wacky in the way that only Carrey could be.  I ate it up.  I found the stuff about the actual mask to be a little spooky.  I found the stuff about a green-faced Carrey to be funny.  I had a hell of a time whenever I watched it.  It was one of those childhood staples.

Then, when I was a teenager, a sequel was announced.  Son of the Mask was going to follow someone else who found the mask and it would be more wacky shenanigans.  Jamie Kennedy was cast in the lead role, which wasn’t promising.  He was coming off of Malibu’s Most Wanted, a movie that I have never liked.  It also didn’t have Jim Carrey, which is always a disservice when making a sequel to a Jim Carrey movie.  Jim Carrey movies tend to only work because of Carrey’s performance.  Removing that and replacing it with a Jamie Kennedy performance was sure to be a downgrade.

Son of the Mask was not good.  I despised the movie.  Jamie Kennedy tried to do something wacky, but his wackiness never worked.  And seeing his face in the green mask… I still get chills thinking about it.  It’s a frightening image.  Where does the son come into the movie?  He has a baby.  So, yeah, surely the baby gets into the action.  I remember it that way, at least.  Also, for some reason, Loki is brought into the movie.  Not the Tom Hiddleston Loki.  This is a different interpretation that takes away the mystique of the mask.

Anyway, this week I will be rewatching Son of the Mask.  It’s about time for this, one of the lowest rated movies of all time, to be covered.  I’m expecting to dislike this.  I’ll be back after I watch the movie to give you my thoughts on what it felt like to rewatch a disastrous sequel to a Jim Carrey movie.  (This isn’t the only one, remember.  Evan Almighty happened, and so did Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.)  Here we go.

Hey, this paragraph has nothing to do with the movie.  I just thought I would split up the before and after by sharing some thoughts on something else.  I tried this pop last week that was Birthday Cake flavoured.  It was an interesting experience.  The soda smelled like birthday cake, so I was like “Oh, this could be good.”  Then I tasted it and it was like an icing covered vanilla cake exploded in my mouth.  I was in cake heaven.  I’ve never had a soda that claimed to taste like birthday cake.  I never expected the flavour would be so spot on when I tried one.  It was good times.  Now back to the regular post.

That was a movie.  Oh boy, that was a movie.  I’m trying to collect my thoughts and I can’t seem to get them in order.  The whole movie was a series of insane bits that never worked.  It wanted to be so much better than it was, and it acted like it was so much better than it was, but the entire thing just stunk.  It couldn’t reach the so bad it’s good territory, instead landing in that dreaded area of bad comedy where the groans don’t stop.

Let’s start with the cartoonish nature of the movie.  The first movie is cartoonish.  It took its cues from Tex Avery cartoons.  There was dancing, a musical number, and the wolf face when the main character saw the romantic interest.  But the sequel took it up a notch, going so far to have that be part of the story.  There were two instances that need to be looked at.  One was a scene in which Alvey (Liam and Ryan Falconer), the son of Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy) and Tonya Avery (Traylor Howard), was watching old cartoons.  One of the cartoons was the one where the frog dances around for the guy but whenever he tries to show anyone else, the frog stops dancing.  That was shown in Son of the Mask.  The interactions between Tim and Alvey were similar to that man and the frog.  Alvey would do something crazy.  Tim would try and point it out, and Alvey wouldn’t be doing it any longer. 

The other direct reference was Tim Avery’s job.  He was, like his namesake Tex Avery, a cartoonist.  Each of his inspirations came from his real life, thanks to the mask.  Most notably was his final, successful cartoon.  It was about a dog and baby vying for the affection of the patriarch of the house.  When the dog put on the mask, both he and the baby had the powers of Loki and fought over who would be the child of the house.  It was like a Spy vs. Spy cartoon, but much, much.  It was too over the top.  And it looked terrible.

Why did it look terrible?  The movie was overwhelmed with computer generated effects.  When the dog, Otis, was wearing the mask, computer generated effects were used to enlarge his head and make the brown patches green.  (Why wasn’t his whole face green?)  Whenever Alvey did anything with his powers, it was computer generated.  There was one shot in which Alvey and Loki played Twister that had them contorting around each other.  It looked so bad.

Another reason the movie looked bad was the cinematography.  There was an intentional attempt to make Son of the Mask look cool and kinetic, but it ended up being irritating.  The camera wouldn’t stay still.  There were zooms all over the place and weirdly angled shots.  It felt like the movie was made for 3-D but 3-D wasn’t popular, so it wasn’t presented in 3-D.  There were finger points in the direction of the camera.  There was a lot of action going in the direction of the camera, really.  It was the most distracting part of the movie.

The most apparent reason that Son of the Mask was a bad movie was the transformation caused by the mask itself.  The mask has the transformation, trickstery powers of Loki.  In the first movie, it made Stanley Ipkiss a wacky Jim Carrey character.  In the sequel, it made Tim Avery into a wacky Jamie Kennedy character.  Those are different styles of wacky characters.  Jim Carrey’s was a wacky that was cartoonish, yet still loveably Jim Carrey.  Jamie Kennedy made his wacky too hip.  He wanted to be the cool version of the mask, but the mask wasn’t meant to be cool in that way.  Whoever made the decision, Jamie Kennedy or the writer, they decided to take the suave nature of the mask and bring it into modern sensibilities.  That did not work.  It created failed attempt at cool that was made scarier by the way Jamie Kennedy looked.  It had the perfect combination of bad prosthetics, bad jokes, and bad camerawork.  It was all around bad.

Before I wrap all this up, I don’t believe I’ve made enough of a deal out of what Jamie Kennedy looked like wearing the mask.  Much like Jim Carrey, his face looked like it was covered in green clay.  The difference was the hair.  The original version of The Mask featured a bald headed crazy green guy.  Jamie Kennedy’s version had red, plastic looking hair.  That was the most frightening part.  I didn’t like it one bit.

A sequel to The Mask sounded like a good idea.  It would have sounded better if Jim Carrey returned.  It ended up being one of the worst decisions to come from Hollywood in 2005.  Nothing about it turned out good.  The story was terrible, the performances didn’t work, and the visuals were irritating.  Sometimes a movie isn’t the sum of its parts.  Son of the Mask was, but all of the parts were bad.  I’m going to do something right now that I don’t often do.  Don’t seek out this movie.  Don’t see it.  It’s bad and will only bring about bad things.

These notes are a little bit better:

• Son of the Mask was suggested by @rosstmiller, who has also suggested Going Overboard, Jack and Jill, and Leprechaun in the Hood.
• Ashley Lyons was in Son of the Mask, after already appearing in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in The Marine.
• Larry Cedar made an appearance in Son of the Mask.  He was also in The Gingerdead Man.
• The star of Son of the Mask, Jamie Kennedy, was also in Bermuda Tentacles.
• Finally, Mary Mouser was in Son of the Mask after showing up in Delgo.
• Have you seen Son of the Mask?  What do you think about it?  What do you think about the first movie?  You can put your thoughts on these movies or anything related to them in the comments section below.
• If you have any suggestions on movies that I should include in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can let me know about them in the comments or on Twitter.  I’m always open to suggestions about what to watch.
• Every once in a while, I’ll put clips of bad movies into my story on Snapchat.  If you want to see them, you can add me.  My username is jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie is going to be Miss Castaway and the Island Girls.  It’s a movie I watched back when it originally aired on television, but I remember very little about it outside of it being dumb.  It’ll probably live up to that memory.  Check in with me next week and I’ll confirm or deny that.