Numb (2007)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Is it possible to have too good a cast? Maybe, when it creates expectations that the rest of the film can’t match. So it is that Numb, at first glance, offers an intriguing list of names: Matthew Perry, Kevin Pollak and Mary Steenburgen—not a bad cast for a comedy dealing with serious themes. In this case, we have Perry playing a Hollywood screenwriter who comes to experience depersonalization disorder. What begins as an intriguing premise, however, soon turns into something far more familiar—a low-octane dramedy in which a middle-aged man (well, nearly middle-aged: Perry was around 37 when the film was shot) finds solace in going out with a girl nearly a decade younger than he is. Yes, I’m being a bit too dismissive—but Numb does itself no favours by going back to some very familiar plot beats and mishandling some less obvious ones. The numbness of the main character doesn’t really resurface past the halfway mark of the film, and you could replace it with a generalized ennui without changing much of it. The film does have one high point, and it works to the rest of the film’s disadvantage in offering a glimpse at what a better, more coherent film could have been: Steenburgen shows up as an older therapist who ends up developing unprofessional feelings for her patient—another bit of male fantasy, sure, but one that’s handled at such a higher (welcome) pitch of comedy that it ends up making the rest of the film feel much blander in comparison. In the end, it’s hard to avoid feeling that Numb (even allowing for the fifteen years since its release) is taking us to overexposed territories—oh, no, poor aging white guys in Hollywood, shoving their midlife crises down our throats as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. (Spoiler alert: I am a middle-aged white guy; I had a midlife crisis; it wasn’t interesting at all. )  If Numb leaves you unengaged, let me reassure you: it’s not because you’re dissociating, it’s because the film is honestly just dull.