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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 40.74%
Worth A Look: 18.52%
Average: 27.16%
Pretty Bad: 7.41%
Total Crap: 6.17%
2 reviews, 69 user ratings
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| Ace Ventura: Pet Detective |
by Justin Helmer
"I laughed until I stopped."
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Anyone who has seen Jim Carrey do his shtick as a stand up comic, or on the Wayan’s brothers’ brilliant ‘In Living Color’ really doesn’t need to see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Or it’s sequel, or any of the hand full of other movies he has made since along the same lines. Recently ol’ Jim has been showing quite a bit of versatility; sometimes it works, (Man On the Moon) sometimes it doesn’t (The Majestic) but I give him full credit for trying to move on. But the one thing Hollywood loves more than a trusty formula is a well-pigeonholed performer to shove in to it. After giving such a memorable series of performances in movies like “The Mask” and “Ace Ventura” it’s no wonder that he has had to fight like a trapped badger to do anything different.It’s not that Carrey is bad here, quite the opposite he is a highly talented physical comedian. I guess it’s a matter of personal taste, his stuff always reminds me so much of Jerry Lewis. Jumping around, yelling, mugging, and than the asshole talks. Repeat till end of movie. All of the technical aspects are here, his timing is good, his physicality is frankly amazing at times, and the material isn’t even all that bad. It’s just that there is so damn much of it. When a person’s character is that loud for that long, eventually it all becomes noise.
Ace Ventura, Miami’s only pet detective, has just landed the case of his career. Somebody has kidnapped the Miami Dolphin’s mascot snowflake. It’s up to Ace along with two members of the Dolphin’s head office Melissa Robinson (Courtney Cox) and Roger Podacter (Troy Evans) to locate the missing dolphin in time for the super bowl. (Which somehow against all odds the Dolphins are playing in…) It’s not the most complex plot in the world; really it’s more of a pretext for Ace to do the jumping, and yelling and mugging. In typical ‘detective’ movie fashion the police department is only around to provide dramatic resistance to Ace. All of the cops are pretty much set dressing except for Tone Loc (!) and Sean Young who turns up as the chilly man-eating Lieutenant Einhorn.
This is defiantly not a movie that improves with repeated viewings, the half-life of most of the jokes here is really pretty short. Yeah, I laughed the first time, which I guess makes it a worthwhile experience, but I’ve never really been able to understand anyone wanting to own this movie. You can see him doing the same things in a bunch of other flicks, with at least the pretext of a different story. But, like I said the comedy here is quality, if the ‘jumping and mugging’ is your cup o’ tea you’ll find it here in droves.I was disappointed that in a couple of places the movie turns all homophobic, it’s really pretty out of place even for 1994. The idea of becoming physically ill after accidentally kissing a man, and making loud retching noises to prove what a fag you aren’t shouldn’t be that funny anymore. It was the only place where the movie actively annoyed me, other than that it was fun. I just can’t imagine a situation where I would ever feel the need to watch it again.
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1917&reviewer=315
originally posted: 01/17/03 20:10:20
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USA
15-Feb-1994 (PG-13)
DVD: 05-Sep-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Jul-1994 (M)
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