Its partly due to Jim Carreys part in 1994s The Mask that, to this day, so many of us still want to shoot him. The big question is, how long does it take to think up a sequel so eyeball-scratchingly bad that it makes Carreys original look like a particularly high-brow episode of The South Bank Show? The answer, if Son of the Mask is anything to go by, is eleven years.
More a vague reworking of the original story than a straight follow-up (Carreys character, Stanley Ipkiss, doesnt even manage a namecheck in this one), it stars Jamie Kennedy as down-on-his-luck animator Tim Avery. He cant get his boss (Steven Wright) to consider his work for love nor money until, that is, he discovers the mask of the title and ends up chucking a wobbler at the staff Halloween party. Possessed by the spirit of Loki (the Norse God of mischief, played here to dismal effect by Alan Cumming), he goes home, gets his wife (Traylor Howard) preggers and hey presto the Avery family end up with a problem child akin to The Omens Damien after over-dosing on Sunny D.
Packed to its creaky rafters with pee-pee jokes, vomit gags and excessive farting, its not too difficult to work out where this films centre of gravity is located: the gutter. Not that Ive got anything against gross out humour a lot of the time I actually quite like it (if you dont believe me, just read my favourable reviews of EuroTrip, Kingpin or Theres Something About Mary) , but Ive always found that one of the main pre-requisites of humour is that it should actually be FUNNY. Son of the Mask, on the other hand, is about as funny as having your entire face smouldered off by a blow torch.
Its disjointed, its directionless, and its more annoying than three Jamie Olivers. Even worse, with its obnoxious CGI and reliance on an astoundingly ugly animated baby which looks like its been sent directly from the sewers of Hell, it pisses right into the eyes of the Looney Tunes legends it attempts to honour. This is slapstick without the charm, animation without the care and Wile E. Coyote without the Acme sponsorship deal. Its a film that stands on the shoulders of giants, stands about for a bit looking all smug, and then looks down and gobs on them.
The real shame here is that theres only one actual mask used in the film. Theres no way thats going to be big enough to hide the shame of everyone involved in this relentless, uncompromising crap-fest.