Fun with Dick & Jane (review)

So you're a poor hardworking joe who's been run over by this lousy economy and you're looking for something to make ya forget the gut-wrenching feeling that you're a piece of roadkill lying on the side of the superhighway of the American dream, so you go to see that new Jim Carrey movie. He's funny, right? He'll make ya forget yer troubles, right? But naw. Even though Jim (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) and his wife -- played by Téa Leoni (House of D), who could be a comic geniusette if someone could figure out what to do with her -- are roadkill themselves, having been hit-and-runned by the Enron-esque implosion of the company Jim worked for, they are themselves the butt of the flick's meanspirited humor. Ha ha (put some cruel Nelson Muntz English on that for best effect), look what they have to do to survive: take a demeaning job at the local Megalomart! sell the TV and make their little boy cry! allow themselves to be guinea pigs in cosmetics testing! If there's meant to be any satire in the idea that these two will do almost anything to maintain their obscene consumerist lifestyle, it's lost in the poking fun at what lots of ordinary working-class folks do to make a living. Could this all be in worse taste? Ask us again when the McMansion-owning Jims-and-Téas of the world have to choose between heating their houses and paying the mortgage this winter.