Metacritic reviews

Ben Stiller directs Lou Holtz Jr.'s script with plenty of unsettling edge, and Carrey throws himself into his part as if it meant something.

The mix of light comedy and really quite dark themes proved too much for many viewers, but this is worth a look for Broderick's performance and Carrey's obsessive touches.

As it is, the movie goes in one direction and the cable guy goes in another, and by the end we aren't really looking forward to seeing Jim Carrey reappear on the screen.

It can't risk real pathos, or real horror, and still be a Jim Carrey movie, so the most it achieves is a kind of unsettling creepiness. Strange movie: Carrey is working his gifted butt off, and we're not allowed to laugh.

Carrey knocks himself out trying to make The Cable Guy different, then neglects the quiet, telling moments that would make it real.

Aiming, perhaps, for a neat double helix of black humor and prankishness, they've ended up with a pretty ugly granny knot.

In all, about a third of the film (most of it contained in three extended sequences) is audaciously funny and genuinely disturbing. The rest will sorely test the devotion of Carrey's fans.

Carrey’s character lacks the empathy or poignance to command ongoing interest, and Broderick’s role strains one’s patience because he’s hopelessly dimwitted and slow to react in any way vaguely resembling human behavior.

The Cable Guy is being marketed as a dark comedy, which I suppose it is, to some extent. Honestly, though, it's just not dark enough.

The Cable Guy doesn't know when to pull the plug. Much of the film plays like a personal boob tube with Carrey trapped inside, determined to act his way out in a mugging freak show. He's a disturbing mixture of psychopath and pathetically misguided lonely soul.