| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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THE CABLE GUY
Rating: 
USA. 1996.
Director – Ben Stiller, Screenplay – Lou Holtz Jr, Producers – Judd Apatow, Andrew Licht & Jeffrey A. Mueller, Photography – Robert Brinkman, Music – John Ottman, Visual Effects – Sony Pictures Imageworks (Supervisor – John Nelson), Special Effects Supervisor – Matt Sweeney, Production Design – Sharon Seymour. Production Company – Licht-Mueller Film Corp.
Cast:
Matthew Broderick (Steven Kovacs), Jim Carrey (Ernie ‘Chip’ Douglas/Larry Tate), Leslie Mann (Robin Harris), Jack Black (Rick), George Segal (Steven’s Father), Owen Wilson (Robin’s Date)
Plot: Just having separated from his girlfriend, Steven Kovacs moves into an apartment on his own and has cable tv installed. There he befriends the cable technician, Chip Douglas. But Chip becomes over-friendly, insisting that Steven be his best buddy and inserting himself unasked into Steven’s life and causing complete chaos by trying to help. But when Steven tries to be rid of Chip, Chip retorts by turning Steven’s life into a nightmare.
The Cable Guy was yet another vehicle for the spectacularly unfunny Jim Carrey to dangle from the rafters and deliver a performance at the top of his voice. This however was slightly different to most Carrey vehicles – the Ace Ventura films, The Mask (1994), Liar Liar (1997) – in that Carrey in OTT histrionic mode is played not as the good guy but as a psychotic stalker. And seemingly as a result of turning Carrey from the funny man into the boogie man, The Cable Guy was not a success. This probably says something about the audience for Carrey films – that they are quite happy to laugh at somebody acting completely off their head but don’t like it when the character is turned around and shown as a disturbed individual. Whereas in real life anybody who did act like Carrey does would surely in all likelihood be regarded as exactly the disturbed individual the film here portrays him as. In all other respects the film is a routine comic variation on the stalker film. The Carrey going whacko set-pieces are all it has up its sleeve and there is little to the film without them.
The film was also the second cinematic directorial outing from Ben Stiller. At the time Stiller hadn’t quite ascended to an A-list name as he would after There’s Something About Mary (1998), which was also a black comedy about stalkers. Stiller’s other films as director include Reality Bites (1994), Zoolander (2001) and Tropic Thunder (2008). His one other genre outing as a director is Heat and Vision Jack (1999), a very strange tv pilot that never aired, a spoofy take on superheroics.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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