Oh man, so one day my dog brought me this gnarly (literally) mask and I put it on and I became just like Jim Carrey in that movie from the 90’s … but then I bonked my head while doing my signature Tasmanian Devil spin and I can’t remember a thing! Do you remember what happened in Son of the Mask?
Pop Quiz Hot Shot!
1) At the beginning of the film we meet Tim Avery who lives in Fringe City and is deeply fearful of fatherhood. What is his job?
2) But his life changes when he gets the mask. Where does he get it from?
3) Meanwhile Loki is looking for the mask. Why?
4) Well, now Tim has a kid and something is a … bit off with him. And their dog actually. The literal baby forms a master plan to get Tim out of the picture. What is the plan?
5) In the end Tim faces Loki, saves his son, and gets his big break. What is the concept of the cartoon he ultimately makes at the end of the film?
Bonus Question: In one of those intertitle sequences they explain what happens to everyone after the end of the film. What ultimately happened to Alvey, the titular Son of the Mask?
Answers
1) Could be construed as a trick question I suppose, but if you said cartoonist I would say WRONG! … WRONG! He’s not a cartoonist at the beginning of the film, he’s an aspiring cartoonist and in reality is just like a mascot guy at a company that makes cartoons. He’s closer to PR or something at that point in time.
2) Well, at the end of The Mask we see the titular mask go into the ocean at Edge City. During the title sequence we see it meander down a river and ultimately end up on the river’s edge near Fringe City where Tim’s dog finds it and brings it home. Tim then decides to wear it to the Halloween party and bing bang boom, his life is changed!
3) Well, Loki’s mask is like a thing … that he needs. Because it contains powers of mischief and Odin (played by an almost unrecognizable Bob Hoskins) really wants Loki to learn some responsibility about keeping magic out of the hands of humans (or something). So Loki needs to get the mask before a deadline or Odin will once again banish him to wherever he was banished before.
4) He’s going to make it so people think Tim is insane. So he dances and sings all creepily like the CGI baby that he is, and so Tim freaks out and it running all over the place being like “holy shit, my baby is like singing and dancing!!” and everyone is like “whatever nutter.” So the plan doesn’t work, but it is kind of on its way to working before Loki shows up.
5) The cartoon is about a guy who has a dog and a newborn and the two fight for his attention all while playing pranks on each other. And in a way the cartoon is a decent concept (maybe for a Looney Toon from the 50s or whatever), but then the CGI is an abomination and ruins it. It is a pretty amazing bad-cartoon-within-a-bad-movie thing, a bad-ception thing.
Bonus Answer: As a real deal cartoon character himself Alvey learns to live with having literal superpowers, but also being vaguely the son of Loki (and thus grandson of Odin). After failing to hold down a series of normal human jobs (teacher, police officer, waiter are the three that are shown) he realizes that really he is a man that bridges both the Earth realm and Asgard. Travelling to Asgard he meets with Odin and asks permission to stay and learn of the godly powers they possess and his request is granted. In the end he becomes an actual vigilante superhero, and is ultimately arrested and sentenced to three years in prison as a public nuisance after multiple late night assaults of soon-to-be criminals were committed. After he got out of prison he returned to Asgard and became the head of the Department of Earthly Relations. No one said nepotism didn’t pay, you know?
That is a little more like the Watchman universe version of the MCU, the version where a bunch of them end up in prison because they keep breaking the law because they think they are above it, and then they are like “pshhhh whatever” when Thanos comes knocking.
Bad Movie Twins 