Fun with Dick and Jane

A suburban couple (Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni) find themselves suddenly desperate when the corporation he works for goes belly up, Enron-style. After a downward spiral of dwindling resources and ever-crummier “opportunities,” they finally resort to a life of crime. Carrey and Leoni make a wonderful team—he manic and twitchy, and she rational and put-upon—and the movie gets off to a good start. It gets better and better through the second half-hour, which is almost painfully hilarious, with more laughs than most full features. But the movie peaks too early and spends the last act sliding downhill. The action becomes labored and confusing, and the laughs dry up, in the final 30 minutes, when the duo hatches an elaborate plot to relieve Carrey’s former boss (Alec Baldwin) of his ill-gotten gains.