WITH DICK & JANE, 'FUN' IS A RELATIVE TERM.

Byline: David Kronke Staff Writer

JIM CARREY can be feverishly inspired, or his goofy riffs can add little to the character he's supposed to be playing. ``Fun With Dick & Jane'' extracts his repertoire's lesser aspects.

This remake of a middling 1977 comedy that commented on social malaise during the Carter administration (what's next? a remake of ``Americathon?'') repeats many of the original's sins: It's formless and toothless and, most critically, not all that fun.

Carrey stars as Dick Harper, an executive at a corporation strongly reminiscent of Enron that implodes the day he's named vice president of communications, the very minute he's on a financial news show swearing it's a thriving concern. Tea Leoni plays his wife, Jane, who ditched her own thankless job anticipating Dick's career rise.

Their upper-middle-class lifestyle is assaulted as assuredly and as violently as an ingenue in a splatter flick. They're resigned to bathing in neighbors' lawn sprinklers, and while their manicured lawn is repossessed, leaving a sprawl of muck circling a home without electricity, they swap his BMW for a Ford Aspire with mismatched fenders.

Meanwhile, Dick's corrupt boss (Alec Baldwin) laments his fallen empire to reporters from any of a number of mansions and vacation resorts. Any resemblance to Ken Lay is purely blatant.

The two are woefully inept at lesser jobs, so naturally the only thing left to do is embark upon a life of crime. These scenes feel curiously tired: They pull off heists disguised as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Sonny and Cher.

While the original at least managed a subversive moment or two - it satirized the children's reading primers (``See Dick run. Run, Dick, run'') back when puncturing the icons of a more innocent time was a novelty, not de rigueur - ``Fun With Dick & Jane'' 2005 isn't really comfortable grappling with the deeper implications of its sordid saga. Hence it devolves into a feel-good vengeance caper - and a not terribly convincing one, at that.

Carrey, gaunt and chiseled, flails desperately, but his shtick - singing in an elevator so histrionically that Meat Loaf would turn away in embarrassment, flicking houselights on and off in high-voltage tedium - doesn't amount to much. (The film barely clocks in at 90 minutes, so if this is the best material Carrey produced, the inevitable DVD outtakes could be cringe-inducing.) At any rate, Carrey's Dick scarcely resembles anyone who otherwise would be successful in the corporate world.

Leoni charms in a scene or two but is otherwise criminally underused. In the original, Jane Fonda was at least given a chance to flex some comic chops.

The most pointed joke is saved for the closing credits, when ``special thanks'' are accorded to a plethora of real-life greed-head executives who have been disgraced, indicted or convicted in recent years. At that point, however, moviegoers are the ones who will be feeling swindled.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

FUN WITH DICK & JANE - Two stars

(PG-13: brief language, some sexual humor, occasional humorous drug references)

Starring: Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins.

Director: Dean Parisot.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: This remake of a middling 1977 comedy about dissolute yuppies fattening their portfolios with a crime spree is more unfocused and toothless than the original. It's the filmgoer who will feel fleeced.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Jim Carrey, left, dresses as Cher, with on-screen wife Tea Leoni donning a Sonny Bono disguise, during a robbery in ``Fun With Dick and Jane.''