I hate the term “ik”. I hate the way the word sounds, the way it’s used, and what it means (because who likes feeling disgusted?)
But when it comes to comedian Jim Carrey, “hic” is the perfect way to describe how I feel about him.
Okay, to be honest, I don’t know this person personally. I’ve never met him and most likely never will, so sorry Jim if you’re actually a nice guy and don’t bring this trouble personally.
But your personality, especially in your films and your comedies, is, well, damn.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is causing this mixture of frustration, reactive shaking and simultaneous gagging, but I think it’s mostly due to the OTT facial expressions, voices and just plain absurd one-liners that come out of the mouth.
“My husband thinks the opposite”
I don’t find any of this funny or even remotely funny, and it makes me want to throw things at the TV screen that I know won’t do any good.
Despite my extremely strong negative feelings towards Jim Carrey, my husband feels the opposite (and knowing this, I still married him, and yes, after almost 14 years of saying that yes, we are still married).
During this time, we also gave birth to two smart, amazing daughters who are now entering their teens. And what better way, my husband thought, than to present what he considers a movie classic like The Mask.
So, over the long weekend, my husband sat down with our daughters and turned on the game to watch Jim Carrey, in his yellow suit and fluoro-green mask, scamper across the screen, contorting and extending his body into questionable positions while ridiculous visual effects showed how his jaw drops. open and stick out your tongue, looking at Cameron Diaz’s character. Oh, and then turn into a panting wolf with his eyes popping out of his sockets.
When this happened, my teenage girls (ages 9 and 10) cringed because sex and romance suck right now. When this reaction happened, I smiled and almost fist-bumped because I thought: yes, these are my girls.
But. Yes, there is a but. As the film progressed, aside from the film’s questionable and, dare I say it, overt sexism, they smiled, and then the unthinkable happened: they laughed. They laughed a lot.
“I needed to prepare for this.”
They laughed at the staged death scene when he won the Oscar and gave his acceptance speech, at the flattened Musk looking off the road and honking his horn, smashing the windshield of a disgruntled driver, and at the way the police who arrested him began emptying his pockets only only to find them endlessly filled with random items, from autographed photos to a giant bazooka that they just couldn’t get enough of.
As they laughed (almost as loudly as my husband) at the absurdity of all the scenes that made me roll my eyes, a wave of something came over me that I couldn’t quite understand.
Confusion? Did I bring the wrong kids home to the hospital? Guilt? Maybe they recently hit their head on something and suffered a mild concussion? Worry? Did I need to see a child psychologist because of some deep-seated (possibly genetic) trauma? Anger? Maybe my illness has turned from an irritation into something bitter?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but then I realized that I needed to prepare for this before I had not one, but three family members making unfunny jokes like: “I” I smoke “everything time.
So I did what any parent would do. I didn’t express my true feelings about their assessment of Dad’s choice of film, but I did encourage them to watch my smarter, more adult, but quality and timeless film, My Girl.
“I’m Officially Dead Inside”
As we sat there together and I watched Vada and Thomas Jay ride their bikes together, knowing that soon his young little life would be taken away by a swarm of angry bees, I felt nostalgic, warm and fuzzy inside me (not specifically about the dying part ). ) because it reminded me of my youth.
But when I turned to my girls about halfway through to see their reaction, they looked at me and said, “Mom, this is boring. Can we watch another Jim Carrey movie instead?”
And then I realized what this feeling was like before: defeat. My teenagers have inherited their father’s love for Jim Carrey, and I’m officially dead inside.