Ace Ventura: Pet Detective [M]

When a leading football team’s mascot, Snowflake the dolphin, is stolen during super bowl week, there is only one person to call: Ace Ventura, pet detective. A charismatic, eccentric, and just overly weird person, Ace is nevertheless a great detective and will stop at nothing until the case is solved, even if it brings some disturbing truths to light. 

Admittedly there is nothing special about the Ace Ventura movies. They have stable but simple plotlines, they’re not wholly balanced, and they use no real cinematic or technological tricks of any kind. Like The Master of Disguise you watch these movies for the comedy and Jim Carrey who plays the pet detective himself delivers fantastically flamboyant and just generally mad performances. 

When a leading football team’s mascot, Snowflake the dolphin, is stolen during super bowl week, there is only one person to call: Ace Ventura, pet detective. A charismatic, eccentric, and just overly weird person, Ace is nevertheless a great detective and will stop at nothing until the case is solved, even if it brings some disturbing truths to light. 

I used to find the Ace Ventura movies hugely hysterical when I was a kid, and I still do to this day simply for the fact that it features the immortal genius and eccentricity of Jim Carrey. His reputation for being the comic madman precedes him and these films are films that you’d go and watch simply for him alone. 

As I mentioned before, the story is pretty simple, it’s all a big detective case. The comedic performance from Jim outweighs and sometimes tarnishes anything else that could be of potential. For example, the mystery of the stole dolphin brings to light a whole murderous revenge story, unfortunately I felt that the moments of psychotic drama that the film tried to convey was not at all convincing although it had the potential to be. The film, for me, was uncertain. It begins humorously enough and establishes everything about the characters and the scenario nicely, but then when the story begins to really progress, it struggles. 

On the plus side, Jim’s performance is absolutely hysterical. His performance is just memorable in the extreme, incorporating infectious catch phrases and great imitations, particularly memorable ones coming from Star Trek and Sean Connery. Not to mention the fact that he has amazing hair in this flick!

Starring Courtney Cox, Sean Young, Tone Loc, Troy Evans, John Capodice, and Dan Marino as himself, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is a very funny albeit slightly stupid film that’s filled with action, mystery, romance, and comedy. It’s from my childhood so I’ll always have a soft spot for it, but it’s really not that great of a film. You’re not really missing anything if you haven’t seen it.