Workaholic businessman Dick Harper (Carrey) has just been promoted to a new executive job at Globodyne and everything looks great. He has a terrific wife in Jane (Leoni) and a young son Billy. They live an affluent life in suburbia with a housekeeper, and they're about to get a new pool and garden. But just after Dick is promoted, Globodyne collapses amidst allegations of fraud. The head of Globodyne, Jack McCallister (Baldwin), is untouched by the scandal at the company and remains wealthy, but Dick is left out in the cold; jobless and, with all his money tied up in Globodyne investments, virtually penniless.

With bills mounting up and no money coming in, Dick and Jane try out numerous jobs and various schemes to make ends meet, but things only get worse. Dick is soon at his wits end and decides to try another way to get some money: he's going to become a robber. With Jane in tow, they soon take on a new life of crime and get some money to live the life that they had. But they're not cut out to be hardened criminals, and so they decide on another way to get their old life and self-esteem back…

Fun with Dick & Jane is yet another Hollywood remake, but most contemporary audiences may never have seen or heard of the original 1977 version. Starring George Segal as Dick and Jane Fonda as Jane, the earlier film was a wittier and more caustic look at the downside of the American Dream. Although this is a familiar story, the new film uses contemporary corporate scandals to update the premise, which promises to put an amusing up-to-date spin on the proceedings. However, the film rarely mines the comedy of Dick and Jane's predicament, opting instead to focus on manic, broadly comic set-pieces that are occasionally amusing, but which grow increasingly tiresome as the films goes on.

Obviously, the presence of Carrey telegraphs the fact that this film is aiming for a more farcical approach, and while his hyperactive manic energy is good in some moments, in other parts of the film, he goes wildly over-the-top for seemingly no reason. This is okay in a film like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which was a role tailor-made for Carrey's physical energy, but here, it may have been better to see Dick gradually slip in more manic behaviour. Instead of showing us Dick's slow, gradual transformation from a contented corporate flunky to a angry and crazed suburbanite, Carrey plays it OTT straight out the starting gate, and the result is like watching a firework that's been let off indoors.

With Carrey bouncing around the film like a hyperactive Tasmanian devil, Leoni is virtually pushed to the sidelines. She is a gifted comedienne (as seen in Flirting with Disaster) , but because Carrey is such a bundle of energy, she can barely get a word or a gesture in edgeways. In fact, their child Billy almost steals the show, and he manages to do so without resorting to Carrey-like antics or featuring in OTT set-pieces. Early on in the film, we discover that the housekeeper is teaching Spanish to Billy, and this becomes a funny incidental running joke, which also has an amusing and surprising payoff later in the film.

Dean Parisot (who directed Galaxy Quest, which was a far more perceptive comedy than this) keeps things moving swiftly, but it's almost too fast at the beginning. Dick and Jane's jobs, as well as the couple's expensive lifestyle and friends, are barely glimpsed before the chaos ensues. However, Parisot makes room for some amusing visual gags about Dick and Jane's work life, with the expansive visuals in the opening scenes (such as a row of BMW cars lined up perfectly in a parking lot, and an enormous reception area on the hallowed 51 st floor at Globodyne) conveying the corporate opulence on display, and the affluent life that the couple aspire to.

All these brief visual gags are funnier and more telling than many of the hysterics ensue. And although there's humour to be had at the expense of huge corporations and right wing politicians, the jokes that this film makes at the expense of Republicans and big business are pretty obvious. For instance, we glimpse George Bush on TV early in the film, talking positively about America, and later on, there's a scene that deliberately echoes an infamous ‘George Bush playing golf' moment from Fahrenheit 9/11, with Baldwin's head honcho made to look, and sound, like the US president.

Then again, the Democrats have an infamous moment in the film too, when Dick and Jane wear Bill and Hilary Clinton facemasks during a robbery (echoing the ‘presidential' thieves in Point Break). Maybe they represent the Democrats striking back at a corrupt system or perhaps the film is implying that both political camps are just a bunch of criminals. Overall, Fun with Dick & Jane provides some food for thought and a few laughs, but what could have been a cutting contemporary satire of everyone and everything that makes up the American dream ends up merely slapping the wrist of corporate America.