This is the story of Dick, an ambitious marketing executive which is promoted to the top just on the day his corporation implodes due to some embezzlement scheme. The first 15 minutes (Dick's ascent) are really very, very funny - that's Jim Carrey at his best.

The movie's best part is when you see Dick and his wife falling all the way to level where survival is really a struggle - this is actually very moving. Their ensuing blotched criminal career is on the other hand not so funny as you might expect -- you have the feeling that this is a very good serious movie trying to be funny just to meet the public's expectations.

I have never seen the original FUN WITH DICK AND JANE (with George Segal and Jane Fonda) so I can't do many comparisons with this remake. However I saw it since Jim Carrey always had been one of my favourite actors of all time (both in comedy and drama) and I was also shocked at the score of 6,1 since I had a fine time watching it.

Dick Harper (Jim Carrey) and his wife Jane (Tea Leoni) are married, with a child and they seem to have a perfect life. However, after a series of scams they lose their own jobs, their lives change drastically. At first they are in crisis and desperate in their search for new jobs. But after a while they discover that stealing things from the richer ones is kinda funny and they turn into a life of crime without ever being captured.

Having never seen the original I can't understand why many people are negative towards this movie. Perhaps is because this remake at times is a bit heavy handed (and I can understand that) but I am sure that also the original was a bit depressing especially when Dick and Jane lost their jobs. The leads (Carrey and Leoni) are in top form and they have lots of chemistry together. Also Alec Baldwin is very hilarious at times in his supporting role.

However what I should say more? Just turn off your brain and enjoy this comedy for what it is even if you, like me, never saw the 1977 original.

I didn't find the 1977 version of "Fun With Dick and Jane" all that memorable, and this remake is about on a par with the original. Those who go for Jim Carrey's brand of humor will probably like it, and in a few instances I have to admit, his antics did make me chuckle. Most notable was that scene where he was dressed all in black with a mask and going bonkers on Jack McCallister (Alec Baldwin). His gyrations were just so goofy you had to laugh. Pairing him up with Téa Leoni wasn't a bad idea as their chemistry for this kind of picture worked. That makeup job when her face got distorted was kind of hideous though, I'm surprised she agreed to the mutilation. The story seems to be a back handed homage of sorts to all the corporate executives who mined their companies for all they were worth before the final nail was drilled into their coffins. Take note of the screen crawl just before the credits roll and you'll see what I mean.

When I first watched and reviewed the earlier picture with George Segal and Jane Fonda in the lead roles, I made mention of the fact that the movie's captioning X'ed out the name 'Dick' whenever it was uttered on screen, obviously to draw attention away from it's inelegant description of a part of the male anatomy. Since anything goes today in movies and TV, no such censorship took place with this film, but that effort in the first place only drew more awareness to it in my estimation. And once again, I couldn't help thinking of a married couple that are friends of mine with the names Dick and Jane, who I kept envisioning through all the nonsense and shenanigans that Carrey and Leoni went through to get their revenge on the head of Globodyne. Fortunately, they never robbed so much as a gas station.