Some movies should not have kids.
"Son of the Mask" is the sorry little offspring of Jim Carrey's 1994 hit "The Mask," about a geel who gains superpowers and a super ego — and turns into a cartoon — when he stumbles on an ancient mask.
Jamie Kennedy blunders along for the absent Carrey, and the filmmakers have toned down the action and purged whatever traces of adult mentality the original possessed, to present the follow-up as a family-friendly flick.
Yet the antics are so dumb, they likely will annoy even young children, while parents will have one more addition to the list of sacrifices made for their youngsters that they can hurl back at the kids in old age.
Kennedy plays Tim Avery, a wannabe cartoonist wallowing on the lowest rungs of the animation company where he works. An insipid introduction to Tim and wife Tonya (Traylor Howard) establishes her as a woman dying to get pregnant and him as a hopeless man-child terrified at the thought of parenthood.
Stuck for a costume to wear to his office Halloween party, Tim shows up behind the ancient mask from the original movie, which his dog has salvaged from the river.
The mask transforms Tim into the life of the party as he swirls through the crowd with Looney Tunes abandon. But Kennedy is no Jim Carrey, whose expressions and inflections were a natural fit for the shape-shifting character.
Kennedy comes off as a poor man's Seth Green, which should give you some notion of how forgettable he is.
Afterward, Tim stumbles home in a randy mood. Nine months later, baby Alvey is born possessing the mask's powers, which he uses to create endless mischief for Tim just as he's struggling to create a cartoon about the Mask character for his boss (Steven Wright).
Meantime, the mask's creator, the Norse god Loki (Alan Cumming), has been ordered by his father, Odin (Bob Hoskins), to find both the mask and the baby it has sired. Did either of these fine actors need work so badly to sign on for this frenzied mess?
"Son of the Mask" amounts to an increasingly loud and torturous series of visual-effects duels, familiar territory for director Lawrence Guterman, who made 2001's "Cats & Dogs," another family movie shallowly built around us-against-them mayhem.
The movie strives for a positive message about growing up and embracing the joys of fatherhood, but when the baby's this ugly, you're left wishing the filmmakers had practiced a little cinematic celibacy.
"Son of the Mask" is rated PG for action, crude and suggestive humor, and language. Running time: 95 minutes.