Rubber-faced comedian Jim Carrey first tickled our funny bones with the comedies Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb & Dumber (all 1994) but has since enthralled us with more serious films like The Truman Show (1998), Man On The Moon (1999) and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004). He does, however, like to switch between the two. His latest, Fun With Dick And Jane, is a remake of the 1977 comedy that also explores some pretty serious issues. Here, he explains why he feels audiences will want to embrace its message...

Clearly as producer and star, you thought the time was right to remake this film?

Yeah. I'm not a big remake fan but I loved the first movie. Even though it was only done in 1977 I thought it was more relevant now because of all the Enron-type swindles that have gone on. I thought it would be a good chance to take a shot at the white collar creeps. Give them what for and give people relief, because everyone's feeling they're part of a company these days.

Might the film also make people feel grateful for what they have?

I think there's a couple of things going on. You can't get too safe. Just accumulating things isn't going to make you sexy to each other. You've got to keep it exciting and keep surprising each other. As far as Dick and Jane's relationship goes, it definitely brought them to life, this little bit of badness that they had going on. But there's this confusion about materialism, that it's about people having things. It's not, it's about how you're perceived when you don't have things. If they'd just taken the stuff inside the house that would have been fine but when they start rolling up Dick and Jane's lawn and the neighbours see, that's when things go crazy. You don't want to be perceived as a loser. But we're all losers in some ways!

But the film was made by a massive corporation. Could you perhaps comment on the irony of that?

Absolutely, it's an odd thing and very ironic that we're doing this movie for Sony Corporation and I'm sure there are some investors who aren't crazy about the idea of even having this movie out there. But we're all faced with that situation, where we make our living and are fed by the rotten apple and we eat around the edges to see how long we can go without swallowing something that will make us ill.

So have you ever witnessed any Jack McCallister-esque behaviour within the industry?

I think we've run into them over and over again in the last five years. That's why we set it way back in the year 2000 because that was on the crest of realising that "oh my gosh, they're taking our money and having their way with it!" It seems like we've lived lifetimes in the last five years with everything that's happened in the world. Trust has gone out of the window, we look at our leaders differently and we realise that the Paddy Chayefsky prophecy is true - that there are no countries, just giant corporations. I think the best we can do is comment on it and make people realise that we're all in the same boat. I think the film will be a relief for the audience as it's a way of taking out their frustrations with the situation in a healthy way.

As producer, did this mean you had to become serious to make sure you got what you wanted from the movie?

Sure. I can be quite formidable if I feel the work is suffering. Often, you see it with the studios, people just want to hold on to their jobs so they don't do anything extraordinary. They just do what they have to in order to not get noticed, so no one ever points to them and says "that was your idea" if something goes wrong. It breeds a lot of mediocrity and that gets frustrating for me. I have to scream and yell because I don't believe in that. I believe in gambling and risking everything. Nothing gets done if you're not passionate about it.

What values do you think are still hidden in the American Dream?

The dream is OK, it's the approach that sucks. I think there's a lot of pressure on people because it's morphing into something larger. It used to be get a house, a car, put your kids through school and save something for retirement. Now it's be Bill Gates or you lose. There's a ton of pressure on people growing up in America to have gargantuan success and it destroys relationships and affects the family. It's not just America but it is very exaggerated there. I mean, Paris Hilton is the biggest star in the world, so what does that say? It's a very strange world we're living in.

What about the morality of what Dick and Jane do?

When they start stealing they're desperate. They think that it's all about the stuff, so they're misguided and react in the wrong way. But this change of life makes them sexy to each other and they start to develop a conscience as they go along. Then of course when the final caper happens it's really about getting everyone's money back. As long as people go to confession after the movie, we'll be fine..

Your next projects sound more serious. The Number 23, for instance, with Joel Schumacher sounds like you're exploring your darker side again?

Yes. It's a thriller. I've been obsessed with the number 23 for years, ever since a friend of mine said one day that he saw the number 23 everywhere. Some of the most significant dates in history all add up to 23. Hiroshima was dropped at 8.15, for instance. So after he started pointing it out, I immediately started seeing it too. It was like a disease that caught on in me and I became obsessed with it. It finished up with me talking to a friend who was a minister and him handing me a book from his pocket that turned out to be the 23rd Psalm - you know, The Lord Is My Shepherd and I shall not want. It became my motto and I even changed the name of my company to JC23 a couple of years ago. The 23 thing happens to me about 10 times a day so I just happened to tell a friend about it who then said he'd just read this script called The Number 23...

What would you miss if you lost everything?

Oh man. I've never been materialistic. There'd only be a couple of photographs that I would miss. I'm sure I wouldn't like it if they took my stuff away but I'd get used to it after a while. I've been there before, I've lived in van, so I can go there. God willing I won't have to.

Fun With Dick And Jane is released in UK cinemas on Friday 20th January 2006.