Jim Carey is a young post-WWII screenwriter just moving from the success of his first B-movie to having a feature film produced, when the House UnAmerican Activities Committee decides that he is a communist. With his career almost certainly over, he has a drunken car accident and washes up with no memory outside of a small town. Everyone seems to 'recognize' him as the son, missing in action, of the owner of a long-closed local theatre - The Majestic. Amid an enthusiastic reception as a returned hero, he helps his 'father' bring the silver screen and the town back to life.

This is a serious role for Carey, but of course his innately comedic temperament shines through. The result is a sense of warmth -- of laughter in the midst of pain. The tension between Carey's trademark smirk and the depth of national,local, and personal tragedy also helps to achieve a dry sense of the ridiculous where appropriate and lets the viewer like the protagonist. Carey's flexible "rubberface" first known to many of us from television's *In Living Color* or appearance in Saturday Night Live skits such as "Night at the Roxbury" has been complimented by his demonstrable flexibility as an actor.

The film presents a compelling picture of post-WWII small town sadness, of movies as a justifiable escapism, and of studio filmmaking as laughably ad hoc and shallow. The depth of the damage done to liberty during the blacklist era, however, isn't treated adequately at all. Indeed the key players were sometimes bunglers but certainly not always the comical tin men presented by the film. Still, the cynical commentary on the HUAC's constitutional violations is truly lovely. "Renegotiating the contract" is how the film studio representative described it.

There are a couple of seeming flaws in the film: First, there would certainly have been a photo of the fugitive amnesiac screenwriter in all the papers - not merely text. Second, the reappearance of a nine-years-missing war hero in a small town famed for its war dead would doubtless have been a human interest story in papers nationwide. This could be confused as nitpicking, except that the premise of the film seems to rest on these two shaky oversights.

I would have liked more biting social commentary as with previous films starring this actor: *Cable Guy*, *Man on the Moon*, and *The Truman Show*. Carey is certainly up for it. This film is not for someone seeking either that or "rubberface" Carey. It is, however, a piece of escapism -- much like the films that grace the screen of a classic theatre called The Majestic.

The official website for The Majestic is Warnerbros.com.