Even though it’s aimed at children the book series has a macabre spine through it which Carrey relished. He got to stretch himself with Peter Sellers impressions including “Stefano…an Italian man.” but the Count still had a cold stare of pure evil. The closest he came was Count Olaf in the film version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Its box office failure led to Carrey never being this wild eyed and evil again. It’s tense and oddly scary, this tone would have been hard to market to fans awaiting the next Ace Ventura or The Mask. Maybe this is why the film failed to find the audience it deserved. Carrey’s performance is still huge, almost overpowering the film, but this time equaling the laughs is an odd fear. It also works to mirror the psychology of any comedian, desperate for the audience to laugh, for their approval – they just want to be noticed. His character had been ignored his whole life, his childhood spent being brought up by television rather than his neglectful parents.
There was a gleeful evil in Carrey’s Cable Guy, one that came from wanting to be noticed. That wildness behind the eyes wasn’t all about seeking laughs this time. It was firmly set in comedy genre mould, and we’d already seen Jim Carrey go full on bad guy as the Riddler in Batman Forever, but there was a new edge to the performance in The Cable Guy. The first time I saw this different side to Jim Carrey was in the 1996 Ben Stiller directed film The Cable Guy.