A movie like The Cable Guy was doomed to fail before the first scene was shot. In the mid-1990s, Jim Carrey became one of the biggest stars of the time thanks to movies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber. You can’t blame someone who grew up with parents struggling financially only to be homeless at one time to ask for as much money as possible. Carrey had gone from being the token white guy on In Living Color to a household name.
He was a brand name overnight thanks to the surprise success of the first Ace Ventura. He even was able to renegotiate a bigger salary for Dumb and Dumber. And Hollywood was quick to demand a sequel to Ventura and he was cast as Edward Nygma/The Riddler in Batman Forever, a role originally conceived for Robin Williams. In just two years, Carrey’s five movies grossed about $1.25 billion worldwide which for the mid-1990s was very impressive.
So, when writer Lou Holtz, Jr. had a $1 million script that had been purchased by Columbia Pictures as part of a bidding war, they wanted the best of the best to put butts in theater seats. (Holtz actually got $750,000 at first with an additional $250,000 when it went into production.) Adam Sandler and Chris Farley were in talks for the title role. Farley had to drop out for scheduling conflicts. And Sandler passed on it.
Then, Carrey was brought on with a then unheard salary of $20 million which would be more than 42 percent of the $47 million budget. The question was could Carrey bring what he brought in the previous movies to a darker comedy. New Line Cinema had softened the content of The Mask from its source material, as it was very violent and bloody. (Also, a character’s death was cut from the movie because it was seemed too brutal.)
Supposedly, Batman Forever was supposed to have a more darker tone before it was re-edited to have a more lighter feeling. There’s only so much you can do with a PG-13 rating. This is like Cape Fear as a comedy or What About Bob? where you feel more sympathy because the hero is an everyman. And that’s part of the problem, Matthew Broderick is poorly miscast as Steven Kovacs, an everyday business office worker who has moved into a new apartment after a failed marriage proposal to his girlfriend, Robin Harris (Leslie Mann).
He has it scheduled to get his cable installed when a man calling himself Ernie “Chip” Douglas (Carrey) shows up to do so. On the advice of his friend, Rick (Jack Black), Steven tries to bribe Chip for access to free move channels without having to do the premiums. But because of this, Chip seems to become more attached to Steven, stalking him. When Steven and Rick are playing basketball at an area gym, Steven shows up and plays in the pick-up game aggressively.
Initially, Steven pushes back but when he tries to rekindle things with Robin for a date night at his apartment, the cable goes out so Steven calls Chip, who arrives. However, Chip is bitter that Steven has been avoiding him guilting him about the free movie channels. So, Steven agrees to hang out with Chip more only to realize he may not be sane.
At a restaurant called Medieval Times, Chip bribes the staff so he and Steven can dress up as knights and joust, which Chip gets too aggressive in as well. But Chip gets Steven a new home entertainment center and hosts a karaoke party while setting Steven up with a prostitute. This further angers him and Steven tries to cut off everything.
However, Chip gets even more aggressive to the point of assaulting a man (Owen Wilson) who was on a date with Robin. Chip gets Steven arrested for stolen property and plays a secret recording of Steven and Robin mocking his supervisor (Harry O’Reilly) at his workplace. Steven is subsequently fired. Then, Chip shows up at a family function where Steven’s parents (George Segal and Diane Baker) like him but Steven becomes upset when Chip wants to do a version of charades with vulgar words.
The problem with the movie is Broderick’s Steven is never really portrayed in a way in which he deserves any of the misfortune. Wilson’s character was rude and obnoxious to the wait staff which was telling about himself so when Carrey pretends to be a bathroom tendent, you can feel the assault even played mostly for slapstick is justified. Steven’s boss does have a foolish hair replacement piece. But Steven told Robin about that in the privacy of his home, not in the restroom at work with people overhearing.
And maybe it’s because both Broderick and Mann are so normal and likeable in their roles, it makes us confused about Chip. Just like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in Neighbors, there’s never a felling that Chip’s behavior is justified toward Steven. It’s obvious he’s a man who has serious mental problems. But Bill Murray in What About Bob? played his paranoia up for laughs. Also, Richard Dreyfus’ Dr. Leo Marvin was somewhat of a egotistical narcissist, so the humor was seeing him put in his place. Everyone around Leo doesn’t see much wrong with Bob who they see as just someone who is a little too gullible but really harmless.
In Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Griffin Dunne played up the main character as a yuppie wannabe who thought he was too good for the people of the SoHo neighborhood. So, when bad things kept happening to him to keep him from leaving the area, we laughed because it seemed practical in how it was handled. I feel this is because Ben Stiller as director and Judd Apatow as producer had their hands tied to make a movie that would get middle school boys to see.
This is a movie that probably needed to be rated R because it could’ve given Carrey a great chance to channel darker tones. Holtz wrote four additional drafts that were darker, before leaving the project. Apatow and Stiller would work on the script. Yet, Holtz receives sole credit. It’s probably no surprise that Holtz isn’t credited with any other writing as of this posting. I also feel that if Stiller had played Steven, he would’ve brought the same style he brought playing Gaylord “Greg” Focker in Meet the Parents and Tugg Speedman in Tropic Thunder. They were likeable characters but there had their quirks that could push your buttons.
Stiller was originally considered to play Steven. It’s nothing against Broderick. He can play the necessary role as he would later show in Alexander Payne’s Election where on the surface he looked like a typical Midwestern school teacher but had a more detestable side to him. Even though Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick is a spoiled obnoxious entitled brat, you felt that his character got his just desserts. Instead Stiller has a better but more shorter role as Sam and Stan Sweet, identical twins who were former child TV stars before things went bad.
There is a subplot of Sam on trial for killing his brother, Stan. As The Cable Guy was released within a year of the O.J. Simpson non-guilty verdict, the movie plays on our growing obsession with true-crime and sensationalism. Stiller also has a look to him as Sam that resembles Lyle Menendez. There’s also the fatal shooting of Artie Mitchell by his older brother, Jim, in 1991. The Mitchell Brothers had directed the porno classic Behind the Green Door. I feel this murder trial subplot was added by Apatow and Stiller.
But the best joke of the movie involves none other than Eric Roberts playing the Sweet Brothers in a made-for-TV movie. In one way, it’s a commentary on how Roberts had played Paul Snider who killed Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) in Paul Fosse’s Star 80. But also by 1996, Roberts’ career was non-stellar with many low-budget movies. Even though he probably only did one day of work, you can tell Roberts is having so much fun laughing at himself knowing he’s probably the type of actor who would appear in a made-for-TV movie that was put together so quick.
Sadly, the rest of the movie doesn’t have the same type of humor. And maybe because you had to be very knowledgeable of all these true-crime stories, many people missed the jokes. Sam Sweet tries to blame his brother’s killing in on an Asian gang as he tells 911 they were speaking in an language that sounded Asian. This may also be a reference to the Carol Stuart murder in Boston where her husband, Charles, tried to blame it on a black man or the Susan Smith case where she said she was carjacked by a black man. Her kids were later found dead drowned in a body of water in South Carolina.
This is also a big deterrent for people who are expecting Carrey to bend over and start talking out of his butt. Chip does have a lisp that is noticeable but there’s nothing funny about a speech impediment. It’s obvious Stiller is also influenced by The King of Comedy, Scorsese’s dark comedy of a mentally disturbed aspiring comic, played by Robert DeNiro, who eventually kidnaps a late-night talk show host played by Jerry Lewis, so he can do his routine on the show. That movie worked because the roles were reversed where DeNiro was showing his goofy side and Lewis was playing a more serious character.
When Chip visits Steven in jail and tries to recreate a scene from Midnight Express where a woman flashes her breast on the window, it doesn’t work. There were a lot of scenes in King of Comedy that made us the audience feel uncomfortable but they were done in the right way. I think if Stiller and Apatow weren’t too worried about keeping Carrey from turning into a Rupert Pupkin like DeNiro played, this movie would’ve been better.
Also, the entire third act goes on autopilot with a generic climax that occurs at the satellite dish Chip had taken Steven to earlier in the movie. There could’ve been something funny about how Chip thinks the dish is the best but Steven doesn’t as a commentary on social class. But since the whole thing is presented just to act as a location for the climax, it never comes off the way it does.
Some people have said this is an underrated comedy. I admit, there are some great moments. Worse the movie isn’t too dark to be funny, it’s too dull to be really funny. Needless to say, it got mixed reviews and made over $102 million worldwide with about $60 million in North America. But that was a disappointment considering Carrey’s previous movies. Carrey’s next movie Liar Liar was more closer to form of what people were used to and it made over $300 million worldwide.
Now, almost 30 years later, the movie has found its audience with some people saying it’s an misunderstood comedy. I’m a big fan of dark comedy but I’m a fan of it when it works. It’s when you have movies like Nothing But Trouble and this, there’s mistakes. Mainly because Chevy Chase and Demi Moore in that former movie were poorly cast the same Broderick and Mann were poorly cast or their characters didn’t have the spark Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis brought to Beetlejuice.
And as Carrey took on my serious roles in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon along with his work on Simon Birch, as the 1990s ended and the Millennium began, The Cable Guy became mostly forgotten for at least a joke on The Simpsons where Homer sees the script and turns angry. But its biggest legacy might be what happened off camera. If you’ve not seen an Apatow movie in the last 20 years, you wouldn’t know that he and Mann became a couple on this movie set and married in 1997 with two child, Maude and Iris Apatow, who are also actors.
The Cable Guy is also reportedly the unofficial start of the Frat Pack, as it features Black, Stiller and Wilson. They would go on to appear with actors like Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Steve Carrell, and Will Ferrell in comedies like Old School, Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Starsky & Hutch and Wedding Crashers to name a few.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 