If you were alive in 2005, you probably remember the posters. A bright green baby with a mischievous smirk, staring back at you from the lobby of a local multiplex. It felt like a promise. A return to the rubber-faced chaos that Jim Carrey pioneered a decade earlier. But then people actually sat down in the dark and watched Son of the Mask.
It didn’t just fail. It cratered.
The film is often cited as one of the worst sequels ever made. Honestly, that might be an understatement depending on who you ask. With a Rotten Tomatoes score sitting at a measly 6%, it’s become a punching bag for film historians and YouTube essayists alike. But looking back from 2026, there’s a weird, haunting texture to this movie that deserves a second look—not because it’s secretly "good," but because it is one of the most bizarre artifacts of big-budget studio filmmaking to ever exist.
The $84 Million Disaster Nobody Asked For
The budget is the first thing that hits you. New Line Cinema spent somewhere between $84 million and $100 million on this thing. In 2005 dollars, that was massive. For context, the original 1994 film cost about $23 million.
Why was it so expensive? Two words: Digital. Chaos.
The director, Lawrence Guterman, had just come off the success of Cats & Dogs. He was the "CGI animal" guy. The studio clearly thought they could replace the physical genius of Jim Carrey with a mountain of expensive, 2000s-era visual effects. They were wrong. Jamie Kennedy, a talented comedian who was huge at the time thanks to The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, was cast as Tim Avery. He’s an aspiring cartoonist living in Fringe City—a suburbia that looks like it was painted by a color-blind interior designer on a sugar rush.
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The plot is... well, it's a lot.
Tim’s dog, Otis, finds the mask of Loki in a river. Tim wears it during a night of passion with his wife, Tonya (Traylor Howard). Nine months later, Alvey is born. But Alvey isn't a normal baby. He’s a "Mask Baby," born with the powers of the god of mischief. This leads to a solid hour of a CGI infant and a CGI dog trying to murder each other in ways that would make Wile E. Coyote rethink his life choices.
Meanwhile, Alan Cumming shows up as the real Loki. He’s being bullied by his father, Odin (played by a very confused-looking Bob Hoskins), to find the mask and bring it home. It’s a domestic drama wrapped in a neon-colored nightmare.
Why Son of the Mask Actually Failed
You can't talk about this movie without talking about the "Uncanny Valley."
The baby is terrifying.
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There is a specific scene where the baby, Alvey, starts dancing to "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" while his head spins and his eyes bug out. It was meant to be funny. Instead, it became the fuel for a generation's worth of nightmares. The CGI doesn't look like a cartoon; it looks like a glitch in reality. When Jim Carrey wore the mask, it was a man playing a cartoon. When the baby "is" the mask, it’s just software struggling to mimic human joy.
The Tone Problem
The original film was a noir-inspired dark comedy. It had gangsters, machine guns, and a certain "adult" edge that made the cartoon antics feel grounded. Son of the Mask ditched all of that. It tried to be a "family film," but it kept the weird, suggestive undertones. There’s a scene involving sperm fertilization that is—to put it mildly—completely unhinged for a PG-rated movie.
- The Lack of Carrey: Jim Carrey famously turned down the sequel. Without his specific energy, the "Mask" persona just feels like a guy in a rubber suit shouting.
- The "Baby Geniuses" Effect: Hollywood went through a phase of thinking CGI babies were the future of comedy. They weren't.
- The Script: It feels less like a story and more like a collection of rejected Looney Tunes gags.
Jamie Kennedy has been pretty open about the experience in the years since. He’s mentioned that the original cut was over two hours long and much darker, but the studio hacked it apart to make it more "kid-friendly." The result was a movie that no one—not kids, not adults, not fans of the original—really wanted to watch.
The Weird Legacy of Fringe City
Despite the reviews, the movie did leave a mark. It effectively killed the franchise for twenty years. There have been rumors for ages about a "true" sequel with Carrey and Cameron Diaz, especially after Carrey's success in the Sonic the Hedgehog films. But Son of the Mask serves as a permanent cautionary tale for studios: you can’t automate charisma.
If you watch it today, you'll notice some interesting cameos. Kal Penn is in it for about five minutes. Ben Stein reprises his role as Dr. Neuman from the first film, providing the only literal link between the two movies.
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It’s also surprisingly obsessed with Norse mythology, or at least a "Disney-fied" version of it. Bob Hoskins as Odin is a choice that still baffles people. He spends most of the movie yelling at Loki from the clouds. It’s a far cry from his work in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which ironically is the kind of "cartoon-meets-reality" magic this movie was desperately trying to capture.
Real Talk: Is It Worth a Hate-Watch?
Honestly? Yes.
It’s a fascinating failure. It represents a specific moment in the mid-2000s when technology outpaced taste. The colors are too bright. The music is too loud. The slapstick is too violent. It’s an assault on the senses that feels like a fever dream you had after eating too much candy.
You’ll find yourself asking "Who thought this was okay?" at least once every ten minutes. That's a form of entertainment in itself. Just don't go into it expecting the charm of Stanley Ipkiss. This is Tim Avery's world, and we're just stuck in it for 94 minutes.
What to Do Next
If you’re feeling brave enough to revisit this era of cinema, here is how to handle the fallout:
- Watch the 1994 Original First: Remind yourself why the concept worked. Pay attention to the lighting and the physical performance—things the sequel completely ignored.
- Check out the Animated Series: If you want a good sequel that doesn't feature Jim Carrey, the 1995 animated show actually captured the spirit of the comics and the movie much better than the 2005 film ever did.
- Look for the "Deleted Scenes": If you can find them, the cut footage of Jamie Kennedy's character provides a bit of context for why he seems so stressed out the entire time. It doesn't make the movie good, but it makes it more human.
- Research the Dark Horse Comics: If you want to see what The Mask was actually supposed to be, go back to the original Mike Richardson comics. They are incredibly violent, dark, and nothing like the "Mask Baby" antics.