The Mask

New Line first planned a horror franchise. The source is the 1991 Dark Horse comic by John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke, where the mask is a murder weapon. Chuck Russell found that level of violence unworkable on screen and turned the tone toward family comedy. The seam is still visible: the first transformation is staged like a possession, and after that the worst the mask does is humiliate people. The second choice concerns the effects work. Russell had the effects designed around Carrey’s performance rather than the other way round, so every stretch and snap lands on a pose the actor has already set up. Watch his face before each transformation and you can see the preparation; the cartoon does not interrupt the scene, it grows out of it. Cameron Diaz was a twenty one year old model with no acting experience, auditioned twelve times, and was cast a week before shooting, after Russell told New Line he would not make the film without her. For: viewers who like broad nineties physical comedy and cartoon logic built in front of a camera. Not for: the masked scenes occupy only part of the hundred and one minutes, the rest going to an ordinary gangster plot around Dorian Tyrel. Readers of the comic will not find its body count here.