Review: The Cable Guy

Matthew Broderick is currently separated from his girlfriend (Leslie Mann) and has moved into a new apartment, though he hopes the situation is only temporary. He gets a new cable TV installation and somehow winds up becoming friends with cable installer Chip (Jim Carrey). It just…sorta happens. Chip’s seemingly a nice enough guy, but overly attached, inserting himself into Broderick’s life without really asking. Since Broderick is a wimp, he doesn’t really put up much of a protest, though best friend Jack Black is suspicious of Chip right away. Eventually, Chip starts to become too much of a nuisance, so Broderick tries to put an end to their friendship. Bad move. Really, really bad move. Ben Stiller turns up on TV footage as twin brothers, one on trial for the murder of the other. That’s Paul Greco of “The Warriors” as one of Chip’s supposed ‘friends’, with Charles Napier and Aki Aleong as two others, the former a cop.

 

Although its status as a flop is a bit of a misnomer, I’ve always had a soft spot for this 1996 Ben Stiller (“Tropic Thunder”) black comedy vehicle for Jim Carrey, a soft spot that no one I know seems to share. Matthew Broderick is perfectly cast as the kind of guy who would be an absolute jerk if he had any guts, and although he Adam Sandler’s the voice, Jim Carrey gives a solid turn as the demented title character. The character is classic black comedy ‘creepy loser who goes incredibly dark when rejected’. In fact, the character dynamic is almost the reversal of “What About Bob?” where the ‘crazy’ guy was actually a sweet-natured pest and the supposed ‘straight’ guy was kind of an arsehole. Carrey’s performance is mostly very good, it’s just that if he didn’t go the Adam Sandler route of attaching a ‘funny’ voice, it’d be an even greater performance. His warm-up routine at a basketball game is funny, and his rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Somebody to Love’ is truly special. My favourite Carrey moment is the hilarious reference to “Midnight Express”, which is just so wrong that it’s right.

 

The best source of humour throughout the film is actually Stiller himself as basically a send-up of the Menendez brothers on a TV crime news show. It’s a great running gag that reaches its peak when Eric Roberts turns up to play the brothers in a TV movie version of the case. It’s especially funny in 2017 because you could totally see Roberts turning up in such schlock. Jack Black is pretty good as Broderick’s concerned (and possibly jealous) best friend, and most of Stiller’s cronies turn up in small bits. The best of these are Janeane Garofalo as an unenthusiastic ‘Medieval Times’ waitress, and Owen Wilson in peak douchebag form as a guy on a date with Leslie Mann (who is fine, as always). It’s a shame that George Segal and the underrated Diane Baker are so wasted as Broderick’s parents, though as is Charles Napier playing a cop. For me, that and Carrey’s lisp are actually the only drawbacks to what is probably one of the funnier black comedies I’ve seen. It’s certainly a lot funnier than say “The King of Comedy”. Whatever you might think of that film, it’s no gut-buster, few black comedies tend to be.

 

Pretty underrated and one of the funnier black comedies, this is one of Jim Carrey’s more forgotten films. I think people at the time thought it was gonna be another slapstick-y cartoony Carrey comedy, and were shocked by the dark tone. It still did well at the box-office, just not a blockbuster. Aside from a poor acting choice with the lisp, Carrey’s funny and quite dark here. Broderick makes for a perfect cowardly jerk straight man, and Stiller himself steals the show in a recurring cameo. Scripted by Lou Holtz Jr (an attorney who never wrote before or since. Apparently Stiller and producer Judd Apatow re-wrote it to be much darker), this deserves a much bigger audience. Truth be told, it holds up a lot better than “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “Liar Liar” (which wasn’t good to begin with).

 

Rating: B-