SON OF THE MASK (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

At the risk of honking off the orthodoxy of the Golden Raspberry crowd, SON OF THE MASK is not that bad. It was probably a doomed effort given how enthusiastically audiences embraced the original MASK as a prime Jim Carrey vehicle. There's probably no way that any other actor could have made the MASK-franchise fly with a totally different character-- and IMO there really wasn't anything more to say about Stanley Ipkiss (though SON arose from an attempt to get Carrey to do just such a sequel).

I suppose a sequel with Ipkiss could have taken roughly the same course as SON. Ipkiss would be happily married to the woman he won in the first movie, and anticipating a new addition to the family when Loki, God of Mischief, came around looking to re-acquire his mask of multiple metamorphoses. But I prefer the approach taken in SON. Again a dog gets hold of the abandoned artifact, and he brings it to his master Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy). The last name, by the way, is a shout-out to the famous animator Tex Avery, whose rapid-fire gags were sedulously imitated in the first MASK. Tim is married to Tonya (Traylor Howard), a successful sales rep, and though at present he only holds down a crappy job he has ambitions to be a great animator and sell a cartoon series to television. But because he isn't really pulling down the big bucks, he doesn't want kids yet, and Tonya does. 

Meanwhile, Loki (Alan Cumming) has been commanded to retrieve the mask by grumpy Norse all-father Odin (Bob Hoskins). Loki runs around Edge City (location of the original comic book stories) following up false leads and getting intensely frustrated.

Through various complications Tim gets hold of the mask, which adheres to his face and makes him The New Mask. In this wild and crazy persona he shows off all sorts of wild magic-- though onlookers mistake the transformations for special FX-- at a party attended by a studio executive. Said exec is so impressed with Tim's new jam that he lets him make a pitch for a series. Tim runs home, still in the Mask, and has baby-making sex with his wife.

Making a baby with the mask on sends out an alert to Odin, and he passes on to Loki the fact that wherever the mask is, it's associated with someone's new infant. But Loki has to go through various hoops to find the Avery house, and while he's looking, Tim becomes aware that his newborn son is a little miracle in more ways than one. To further complicate things, Tim's dog Otis gets hold of the mask and hides it.

The rest of the plot amounts to a lot of short tug o'war struggles between Tim and Loki, with tons and tons of wild CGI animation. culminating in a boxing match between New Mask and the God of Mischief. But the various character moments, while not profound, aren't bad-- Otis being jealous of Alvey, Tim trying to bond with his freaky son, and even the dysfunctional relationship between Loki and Odin. ("I'm never going to be like Thor, Dad!") While re-watching it I even thought that SON's script exhibited some of the dynamic between the child's mind, which contains both (1) an ability to embrace all sorts of lunacy and impossibility and (2) a need to form bonds with its parental units in order to mature.

But was it funny? Well, Kennedy did some good acting as put-upon Tim, but it's no putdown to say that he didn't have Carrey's manic energy. The effects were critiqued for being too frenzied, but they're not any worse in that respect than ROGER RABBIT. I was mildly amused but confess I didn't laugh out loud, though I might have liked it better as a kid. Howard and Cumming supply good support work, but they're the only other actors with much to do, though Hoskins has good presence in his few scenes as the All-Father (who even has only one eye, as in the old myths).