Jim Carrey spends most of 1994’s The Mask as Stanley Ipkiss, a bank teller in Edge City who gets pushed around by nearly everyone he meets. Then he finds a wooden mask in the river and becomes a green-faced trickster who can bend his own body and the world around him into cartoon shapes. The pitch is simple: from zero to hero, 101 minutes, and a movie star being born in real time.
Trailer, via Warner Bros. Rewind.
Chuck Russell Had Already Cast His Lead
New Line Cinema executives worried the film would flop without established names. Rick Moranis, Martin Short and Robin Williams had all been floated for the lead. Director Chuck Russell had watched Carrey at The Comedy Store and followed him on In Living Color, so he pushed back and kept Carrey. Nicolas Cage and Matthew Broderick stayed on a short list in case Carrey said no. He didn’t.
Cameron Diaz Arrives From Modeling
The film marked Cameron Diaz’s acting debut. She plays Tina Carlyle, a singer at the Coco Bongo nightclub and the girlfriend of gangster Dorian Tyrell, played by Peter Greene. Susan Boyd provides Tina’s uncredited singing vocals. Diaz had been a model with no prior acting experience, which is exactly the kind of gamble that reads as obvious only after the fact.
A Mask That Grants Wishes Badly
Stanley uses the mask to humiliate his landlady and the mechanics who gave him a faulty loaner car. He also robs his own bank to afford Tina’s show. The mask is not a gift. It is an excuse, and the film knows it.
I remember one night when he was sick as a dog and he was throwing up and he said, “I can’t do this.”
That is producer Bob Engelman on Carrey filming with the flu. Carrey said he built Stanley on his own father, “a nice guy, just trying to get by.”
The Villain Gets A Second Face
When Tyrell wears the mask, pro wrestler Jeep Swenson plays the transformed body and the character speaks in a demonically deep voice. It is the film’s best structural joke: the same magic that makes Stanley likable makes Tyrell a monster. Peter Riegert’s Lieutenant Mitch Kellaway and Amy Yasbeck’s reporter Peggy Brandt chase the story from the outside.
The Box Office Was Not The Problem
The Mask grossed $351.8 million against a production budget of $18–23 million and finished as the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1994. It opened July 29, 1994, to positive reviews. Principal photography ran in Los Angeles from August 30, 1993, into October.
Where The Movie Actually Stands
The money and the reviews say one thing. The movie says another. The Mask works as a Carrey showcase and not much else. The plot is a delivery system for his face, and the romance with Tina never earns its turn. The mask itself is the most interesting character, and it has no arc.
5.9 of 10
A star-making performance inside a thin movie. Worth watching once for Carrey.
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