THE MASK (1994)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

Though I vaguely remember reading the original "Mask" character published in the nineties by Dark Horse Comics, that iteration made very little impression on me. I remember thinking that the original humor was fairly dark and violent, so it's probably all to the better (particularly for the career of Jim Carrey) that the movie-MASK is much more family-friendly. Indeed, the film practically seems like a love letter to the wild slapstick tone of Tex Avery, whose cartoons had undergone a renaissance of sorts, partly due to 1988's ROGER RABBIT. LIke ROGER, MASK depends on the jarring interaction of live-action and animation, though this time, all the animated effects stem from one entity, who has near infinite power to overwrite the restrictions of reality. 

Downtrodden bank clerk Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) lives a life of quiet desperation. The one bright spot in his dull life hinges on a meeting with Tina (Cameron Diaz), a glamorous nightclub singer who seems to reciprocate he feelings for her. Then Stanley finds an archaic wooden face-mask. When he finally dons it, it molds itself to his face, and he transforms into a green-skinned, zoot-suited mischief-maker with the power to alter reality. I don't think he's ever called "The Mask" in this film, though later on this becomes his de facto "superhero name." He immediately uses his abilities to humiliate some of the people who tormented him, though with a cheery elan that keeps his deeds from seeming mean-spirited. Eventually Stanley is exposed to the theory that the mask may be a creation of Loki, Norse god of mischief, though this is never decisively confirmed.

The Mask becomes a crimefighter (of sorts) by accident: he witnesses a gang of robbers escaping a bank with their haul, and he simply rips off their loot so he can purchase tickets to see Tina's next performance. (Not sure why a magical being needs to buy tickets to anything.) This action earns the enmity of the gang-boss behind the robbery, one Tyrell, while a police detective, Kellaway, becomes suspicious of Stanley's involvement with the weird green trickster.

The Mask intrudes on the nightclub where Tina sings, which happens to be owned by Tyrell, who also happens to be Tina's domineering boyfriend. The Mask makes fools of Tyrell's goons and sweeps Tina off her feet, despite the fact that she's never seen him before. (She and everyone else seem to take the presence of a metamorphic being pretty much in stride.) Stanley, however, begins to fear that his own humanity may get subsumed by the Mask's influence.

Betrayed by a confidante, Stanley's jailed by the police (though I don't know how they would prove he could transform into a green-skinned cartoon) and Tyrell gets hold of the mask. The gangster takes on the artifact's powers and immediately becomes a super-being, but he's still a small-time thinker. He puts the snatch on Tina for her alienated affections and plans to blow up the night club for some reason I didn't follow. Stanley has to call upon his inner hero in order to battle for Tina's safety, recover the mask's power and defeat Tyrell's gang. Stanley is reunited with Tina and casts away the magical artifact, though it returns in the box-office flop SON OF THE MASK.

The movie's a fairly formulaic comedy, but most of its jokes and stunts land fairly well, so director Chuck Russell was right to push for a light-hearted approach to the material. Though the franchise was never became a success in any other iterations, the movie's main significance is its status as one of the many films of the 1990s to prove that films in the superhero idiom could appeal to a general audience once given a budget that allowed for expensive FX.