Son of the Mask
On its way to DVD, "Son of the Mask" takes a migraine-inducing, must-avoid detour to movie theaters. It bears no resemblance to the 10-year-old Jim Carrey movie that allegedly inspired it and reeks of a studio desperate to make an easy buck from the memory of one of its hits. The original, about an average Joe who turns into a devilish fiend after he finds a magic mask, has been transformed into a lobotomizing family film in which a kid-phobic man suddenly becomes the father of a possessed tot.
Alan Cumming -- apparently willing to appear in anything offering a terrible wardrobe and a paycheck -- plays Loki, the Norse god incarnated as someone who looks like he was on his way to goth night at ManRay and wound up here instead. He's come to Earth to fetch his mask, which wound up in the suburbs at the home of cartoonist Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy). He's presumably named after Tex Avery, the creator of Daffy Duck, among others, but the movie is missing the wit of the average Looney Toon. (That should probably go without saying.) Instead, the emphasis on noise and pratfalls resembles a subpar episode of "Tom and Jerry" strung out on soda.
Whoever wears the mask is turned into a maniacal computer-generated effect bent on pranks and destruction. When Tim's wife (Traylor Howard, a perky sitcom veteran) leaves him alone with the baby, the predictable happens and all heck breaks loose. What follows is 90 minutes of flying grand pianos, green vomit, giant hand grenades, and photography that almost takes you into the actors' pores.
At its least intolerable, the movie is a fatherhood freak-out, but all its jokey observations are summed up with crotch kicks and projectile urine. Parents looking for a less harmful way to pass time with the kids are slightly safer at Gymboree.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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