Despite not being a great Jim Carrey fan, I had been curious about this film for some time and finally got my chance to see it last week. As it never really made it in the cinemas here, I had on the one side prepared myself for a disappointment, but was at the same time hoping to discover an underrated gem for myself as I once did with Pleasantville. Unfortunately I didn’t and The Majestic passed by the cinemas for good reason.

Peter Appleton (Jim Carrey) is a screenwriter living in Hollywood in the 1950′s when he is arrested on suspicion of un-American activities, a.k.a. being a communist. Such was the Mccarthy witch-hunt era of the time. Within one day his contract with the film studio is terminated, his girlfriend leaves him and he faces charges of which he claims he is innocent. Having drowned his sorrows in a local bar he has a car accident, bumps his head, washes up on the beach of a nearby town, Lawson, and has lost his memory. The people of Lawson mistakenly herald him as the long lost Luke Trimble, one of the many young men from the town thought to have lost their lives during the Second World War. His ‘father’ Harry (Martin Landau) is over the moon and decides to re-open the run down cinema, The Majestic, in tribute.

I haven’t mentioned anything above that wasn’t on the DVD cover, but it takes well over an hour to get to the point of re-opening the Majestic and I felt like I had already ‘read the book’ as the film itself added no depth or emotion. Quite boring really. Carrey’s role doesn’t do him justice because, even though I loathed him in films like Dumb and Dumber, I have come to appreciate his acting talent thanks to other films such as The Truman Show and Man on the Moon. His portrayal of the somewhat self-centered Peter Appleton transforming into the altruistic, perfect Luke Trimble and them back again and back again, is too simplistic and eventually predictable. I didn’t believe Carrey in this role and therefore I didn’t give a toss what happened to his character which usually poses somewhat of a problem in a film.

The film only really gets going after they have re-opened the Majestic and the FBI tracks Appleton down, by which time we are nearly at 2 hours – yawn! The town is of course horrified to learn that he is not Luke although his childhood sweetheart, Adele (Laurie Holden), appears to be most understanding. The film culminates in a courtroom scene where Appleton must choose between admitting he was a communist and naming others to get a lighter sentence or making a speech about the first amendment and democracy being upheld. No prizes for guessing his choice.

This film contains absolutely no surprises and the rather over-simplified and moralistic approach towards the McCarthy era could only have felt enlightening or interesting to people who never paid attention in history class and don’t know who McCarthy was and what he did. I would have expected more depth from The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption director, Frank Darabont. He obviously needs a strong script, preferably with a twist in it like the above-mentioned films, as he hasn’t succeeded in adding any depth, atmosphere or originality to the rather thin story of The Majestic. Perhaps he will do better with the upcoming Farenheit 451?

Conclusion: Predictable, hence boring and too sickly sweet (even for me and I love a happy ending!).