Entertainment
Comedy Legend’s Disturbing, Most Hated Film Was Just Ahead Of Its Time
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Jim Carrey rose to fame as a rubber-faced funnyman in films like The Mask and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, but he later showed how serious he could be with films like The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Before those acclaimed movies, however, Carrey starred in a film so dark that it threatened to jeopardize his career as Hollywood’s favorite comic actor. That movie is The Cable Guy (1996), and you can now hop on Tubi to stream an underrated classic that was way ahead of its time.
The premise of The Cable Guy (directed by comedy icon Ben Stiller) is that an architect getting over a nasty breakup (a proposal gone wrong; ouch!) befriends the cable guy who helped him watch movies for free. Unfortunately, that cable guy soon proves to be as obsessive as he is demented, and the toxic friendship he offers begins to ruin the architect’s life. His new “friend” is a one-man social wrecking ball, and it soon becomes clear that his free cable comes at way too high a price.
The Greatest Comedy Cast Of The Decade?
The Cable Guy has a surprisingly all-star cast, including Ben Stiller (best known for Tropic Thunder) and Jack Black (best known for School of Rock). It also stars prolific actor Eric Roberts (best known for Runaway Train). Oh, and to really drive home just how ‘90s this film is, it also features David Cross (best known for Arrested Development) and Andy Dick (best known for getting arrested).
Of course, the primary stars are Matthew Broderick (the ‘80s icon best known for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and Jim Carrey (the ‘90s comic legend best known for the Ace Ventura films): the former plays the straight man trying to get his life back together, while the latter plays the chaotic force of nature trying to tear everything down. The movie’s sublimely weird tone (it’s basically What About Bob? mixed with Cape Fear) helps challenge each actor, forcing Broderick into more of a dramatic role and forcing Carrey into a horror role. This nicely subverts our expectations about these characters even as it subverts our very understanding of what is and isn’t funny.
The Movie That Broke The Critics
In some ways, The Cable Guy was a victim of Jim Carrey’s outsized success as a breakout ‘90s comedian. The film earned $102.8 million against a budget of $47 million, making it a certified hit; nonetheless, Carrey was such a box office draw that both the studio and the audience expected his dark comedy to earn more money. As producer Judd Apatow (who would later become a director and tastemaker for early aughts comedy) put it, “people looked at it as a failure because it didn’t make even more money.
The Cable Guy was quite baffling to reviewers when its weird vibes first wired their way into theaters. It has a 57 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics complaining that the movie is frustratingly uneven throughout its runtime. They did admit, however, that the film has some deliciously subversive humor and provocative ideas that are often (though not always) enough to offset the uneven tone.
The Star Who Sang The Movie’s Praises
Interestingly, nobody likes this controversial film quite as much as Jim Carrey, who told LADbible in 2022 that “The Cable Guy is one of my favorite movies.” He went on to claim that his deranged character in the film “is all of us: we were all raised by the TV.” In that way, his character is less of a pop culture anomaly and more of a dark mirror image of an audience that is increasingly obsessed with media.
Dancing Into The Future
Personally, I think The Cable Guy was ahead of its time in presenting someone so obsessed with pop culture back when the World Wide Web was relatively new. Now, we live in an age where some people communicate almost exclusively in memes from movies and TV shows, and influencers make their living by reacting to whatever they have recently watched. Furthermore, the meteoric rise of Comic-Con-style events since this film first came out is proof that everyone is collectively crazier about pop culture than ever before.
While it still provides some wonderfully dark chuckles, the modern state of media obsession makes The Cable Guy a bit surreal to watch. It’s difficult to see the titular protagonist’s crazy antics and not think about some of your friends or family members who freak out over movies and TV shows and develop parasocial relationships with online personalities. This makes the film feel downright prescient at times, even as it introduced us to the darker side of Jim Carrey.
A Movie Ahead Of Its Time
Speaking of which, a fascinating side effect of The Cable Guy is that it opened unexpected doors for Carrey: for example, he almost certainly wouldn’t have landed serious roles in films like The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind if not for this earlier dark comedy. This was the film that proved that Carrey could still be compelling and charismatic even when he’s not doing his rubber-faced Ace Ventura thing. He’s gone on to do even more amazing work since then, none of which would have been possible if he hadn’t starred in the most transgressively hilarious film of the ‘90s.
Will you agree that The Cable Guy is a disturbing film that was frighteningly ahead of its time, or would you rather switch back to cable than stream this film on Tubi? You won’t know until you stream it for yourself and discover just how crazy a film can get. Come for the weird comedy and stay for the weirdest homage to Cape Fear ever made!
