The Cable Guy is the TV man from Hell. With friends like this, no one needs enemies.

Just a few words from Steven (Matthew Broderick) are enough to condemn him. Jim Carrey's Cable Guy battens on to him like a barnacle.

Denied love and affection in a TV-drenched childhood, this lisping leech tries to buy them by installing all the latest gadgets in the homes of his 'preferred customers'.

Getting rid of this grinning spectre is another matter: Hell hath no fury like a Cable Guy scorned.

And rejection always brings retribution - a fact underlined by an ending that rounds things off in the mood the film establishes and keeps.

Carrey and Broderick couldn't do more to make this work; and Janeane Garofalo has fun in a cameo as a waitress at a medieval club where Broderick finds himself jousting against a gleeful Carrey for his very life.

Ben Stiller (who also directed), Owen Wilson and Jack Black are all in the supporting cast.