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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

Before watching the Truman Show I actively avoided Jim Carrey movies because I really disliked his over the top acting. Just like in your case, this movie completely changed my view of Jim Carrey, even the performances in previous movies that I had disliked so much. I may even call this my favorite movie of all time.

Btw, Jim Carrey has never won an Academy Award, and neither has The Truman Show, which is quite a shame.

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For me the equivalent was seeing Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. I was channel surfing and this came up randomly. It was absolutely captivating, and was easily the best portrayal of mental illness I had ever seen in cinema.

Adam Sandler! That goofy idiot that plays in low-budget comedies that won't even make you laugh once!

Someone on Reddit explained that Sandler is a true genius because he doesn't work too hard, does "fun" low-stress movies, and takes his friends along to "assist" in beautiful tropical locations. All probably as a tax write off.

Brilliant.

Score of 7.5 on IMDB is not too shabby! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/

Adam Sandler also delivers a stunning performance in Uncut Gems - any preconceptions of him disappear as he plays the role of a greedy, jaded gambling addict so well. He clearly knows how to act, just chooses the low-stress comedy route most of the time.

I love Sandler's movies exactly because you know exactly what you get. He's found a formula that works well enough, and has largely stuck to it. He's one of a handful of actors I can go "I'm in the mood for a X movie" about and not care much which movie it is. They're a genre in themselves.

Sure, I know I will groan at how dumb various things are, but that's part of the expectation.

Carey is similar but less so. His span is wider. That hits both ways, Carey at his best have more brilliant performances than Sandler, but it also means that you can be in the mood for Carey, but not Mask and Ace Ventura stupidly over-expressive Carey, for example, so it's harder to just semi-randomly pick one of his movies based on a mood.

There's a few actors that just fit in a niche like that. I'm thinking Steven Segal, who's been playing the same role in the same film for decades now. But his movies are sold and played on TV all the time, there's definitely an audience for his brand of... whatever he's selling.

It undersells what he’s doing a little bit to say it’s just a formula. He’s still trying to be experimental, it’s just that, in his risk taking the riskier he makes things the worse they tend to be. His Hubie Halloween accent is a good example. “What if I spent an entire movie talking like this in this silly voice” is one of his gags, and more often than not it doesn’t work, but he still tries new voices.

He is great in Uncut Gems too.

(That movie is absolutely great, but it is a hard watch. I don't regret watching it, but I would never watch it again).

He's a fine actor. He just happens to look and act like the middle aged guy next door so he gets overlooked.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind comes to mind, as well.

Man on the Moon too.

Also not a fan of his variety of slap-stick & such, he's good at it but it just isn't something that works for me from other performers either, but give him a slightly more dramatic role where he isn't just being Jim Carrey Jim-Carrey-ing like Jim Carrey, and you can see he has a talent.

(not that I object to his other stuff existing – different strokes for different folks!)

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