"The Majestic" was one of those movies that when it came out, I decided I would like to see it, but only on video. And after it left the New Release rack. Well, that time finally came.

This is one of Jim Carrey's "serious" movies, in the mold of "The Truman Show," which I still regard as a fantastic movie. Every now and then, Carrey does a show like this, to try to prove that he has some acting skills other than the ability to do funny voices and make silly faces.

He comes across well, though for me his best acting turn was when he imitates the ear-to-ear grin of his monkey doll. Carrey plays Peter Appleton, a studio-owned B-movie screenwriter who has no convictions except egoism--if it's good for him, he'll do it; if not, he'll avoid it. It's 1951, and Peter gets blacklisted in Hollywood because someone implicated him in the McCarthyist Communist Hunt. He gets drunk, smiles like a monkey, goes for a drive, swerves to miss a possum (I though possums were limited to the Eastern US, but I just looked up a range map, and they do indeed exist in a narrow strip on the West Coast--who knew the movies could be so educational?), falls off a bridge, and konks his head. Moral of the story: don't drink and drive.

He wakes up on the beach near the small town of Lawson. The townsfolk take care of him, till they realize he must be Luke Trimble, one of the 62 Lawson boys killed or missing from World War II. Thanks to amnesia, Peter believes them, and begins living Luke's life, from his job to his nemesis to his girlfriend (why this pretty girl from the 1950s hasn't gotten married in the 9 1/2 years Luke has been dead is taken for granted--although Luke has a gravestone in the town cemetery, she seems to still be waiting for him).

The movie progresses promisingly enough. The more Peter becomes Luke, the more exciting it seems the moment will be when everyone (Peter included) realizes he's not Luke. Luke's family ran a movie theater (the titular Majestic), and it's inevitable that eventually it will show one of the movies Peter wrote. And indeed, that's the point where Peter's memory floods back.

But immediately Luke's father dies (and Peter decides, wisely, not to tell him the truth during the obligatory pietà scene), and even as the townsfolk are walking home from the funeral, the feds show up to arrest Peter as a commie. We do get to see the girlfriend's reaction to learning the truth, but because Peter gets whisked back to L.A. for a hearing/trial so fast, we don't get to see what happens in the town. These people have been deeply grieving for 10 years, and when "Luke" showed up alive, they began to come alive. We've grown to care about these people and their feelings about their war dead, but that's all cast aside to bring us the Climactic Courtroom Scene, where Peter, contrary to all his background and personality, gives the House Committee on Unamerican Activities an emotional sermon on the First Amendment.

At this point, the movie just becomes stupid. The movie isn't about McCarthyism, it's not about Free Speech, and it's not about America as a concept. It's about a self-professed "guy, just trying to figure things out," the people who care about him, and how they can carry on when things are figured out. The ending is too by-the-book; it's like all the townspeople (not just Emmett the humble and sincere ticket-taker, played by the best actor in the movie, Gerry Black) knew all along who he was, and were just playing along.

It's a sincere, thought-provoking movie that unhappily discards its touching human element in favor of a manipulative, maudlin denoument.