How’s Jim Carrey Going to End?

“Well, if I had my choice, it wouldn’t start at all. It would already have been. And it wouldn’t end either.”
— Jim Carrey, in Jim & Andy (2017)

Jim Carrey is far removed from the pop culture supernova he once was, exploding upon the zeitgeist with a booming voice and gyrating pelvis. Now he is relegated to the periphery of the spotlight.

If you have spotted him since his last major Hollywood turn (reprising one of his first successes 20 years later) in Dumb and Dumber To, it was likely on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, in the art documentary I Need Color, on talk shows promoting his Showtime series I’m Dying Up Here or on the red carpet at this year’s New York Fashion Week.

With each appearance, he waxes more and more philosophical, sounding as esoteric as Matthew McConaughey in a car commercial. His latest re-entry into the popular canon, with the Netflix documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond…, offers a glimpse behind the proverbial mask.

Documentarian Chris Smith opens the full-length doc posing a question to its star, “So, Jim. How would you start this movie? The now fully-bearded Carrey with an air of calm and serenity more often attributed to Buddhist monks, ponders his reply and aptly…