Starring: Jim Carrey, Téa Leoni, Alec Baldwin
Cert: 12A
Released: 20th January 2006

Dick (Carrey) has a good job with a thriving corporation that he enjoys and works hard at. His wife, Jane (Leoni), also works hard but is starting to feel the pressure of juggling the full-time job with trying to raise their child and run the household. So when Dick receives an internal promotion to Vice President of Communications she is happy to quit her unappreciated position to dedicate more time to her Spanish-speaking child.

Unfortunately for them all, Dick's promotion is short lived as the company, suspiciously, goes bust and everyone loses their jobs. There follows a downward spiral of fortune for the Harker family as job opportunities are in short supply, their savings start to run out, things are repossessed and what's left is sold for the cash.

They both attempt more 'menial' modes of employment but desperate intentions and hilarious consequences prevent their success. They played by the rules but got screwed and so they are driven to buck the system and turn to a life of crime. Which they discover they are pretty good at. What starts with a lawn, stretches to gunpoint robberies and works up to a final, elaborate bank vault job.

But Dick's name becomes the next in line for indictment because of suspected fraudulent behaviour of his ex-company's board. A chance encounter with an ex-executive (the incredible versatile Richard Jenkins) allows Dick and Jane to discover the truth behind the dissolution of the company and the machinations of the boss, Jack McCallister (Baldwin). So they turn they're illicit intentions and experience to his amassed millions for remuneration of their losses and some karmic retribution.

Another remake hits our screens. This time from the 1977 George Segal and Jane Fonda original of the same name. Not being au fait with the source material, however, gives this version a certain amount of leeway.

Dick and Jane are middle-class suburbanites who strive for all the fancy things that their richer neighbours have and so aren't who you might consider to be your usual sympathetic characters. But they are naively living out the American Dream without paying much attention to the whats and wherefores. Thus, it's their gullibility and niceness that causes them to fall befoul of the higher, more exploitative powers and gets the viewer on their side.

Fun With Dick And Jane is a neat stitching of one set piece after another. Their decline from middle-class utopia offers plenty of comedy situations and then enough variations within each premise to keep the action fresh. The homestead, their jobs, the unemployment, the job searching, the new work, the crime wave and the dénouement are all put through the comedy wringer to extract every ounce of potential. The emphasis is on uncomplicated, good-natured laughs, mostly, at the expense of the two leads.

Obviously there is a certain degree of Carrey showboating but that's almost a contractual obligation. But even his ad-libbing and gurning is reigned in to a minimum so as not to steal the show completely as Leoni is given an equal measure of her own moments. The increasingly popular distortion of the lead's facial features to grotesque effect (see also: Hitch and Monster In Law) is put to good effect with Leoni coming off worse (or, perhaps, better?) than her co-star and the perfect depiction of their absolute fall from grace but also their unconditional love for each other.

One of the funniest sequences, and probably the time when Carrey was let off the leash to run wild, is a robbery sequence involving children's voice distorters and a previous antagoniser being 'tortured' by Dick's juvenile antics.

Carrey and Leoni have great on-screen chemistry that allows the viewer to get past their yuppie, spoiled lifestyle and be genuinely endearing characters. Add to the funny leads a smattering of pratfalls, by-the-book comedy dog and child, a couple of great support roles (the nanny does a very puerile but funny pronunciation of 'Richard'), some misdirection gags and a bundle of, if not original, then certainly well executed set pieces makes Fun With Dick And Jane a very risible and worthwhile comedy.