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The Mask – It was good fun watching The Mask again with Zen, getting a big big introduction to the plastic face of Jim Carrey, with his plain, clean-cut meekness. Dorian is quite evil as a gangster, so is Niko as the uber gangster, who knocks a golf ball off a tee in Dorian’s mouth. There’s a great cameo by a droll, droning Ben Stein as a psychologist that Stanley Ipkiss visits, and Peter Riegert (Boon from Animal House), playing a hard-ass cop (where he’s totally outclassed by Tommy Lee Jones in every movie that guy’s ever done). Everyone’s favorite scene in the film is when Stanley meets Tina (played by a very sexy Cameron Diaz, in her film debut), then leaves the park to discover a squadron of cops covering him. He dances the Cuban Pete number and gets everybody shaking their booty. Hilarious. Milo, the adorable Jack Russel Terrier, steals every scene he’s in, including the scene when he too has the mask (not to mention the final scene when Charlie tries to get the mask… but Milo keeps it away from him).
There are a few extras, including a few deleted scenes of interest – in one of them, Leif Ericsson discards the mask in the New World (only to be re-discovered centuries later, of course), and in one of them deceptive reporter Peggy Brandt gets thrown into a printing press – the newspapers that come out show a squashed Peggy, her murder headline news, ha ha ha. Apparently, the producers took that scene out because they wanted to save the character for a sequel (I wonder if that means that actress Amy Yasbeck was extra-nice to the producers of the film). Unfortunately, the sequel Son Of The Mask was a flop, earning back less than 20% of what it cost to make the film. Ooops!