Cast: Jim Carrey, Courtney Cox, Sean Young
Year: 1994
Genre: Comedy
'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective' shows Carrey back in his prime and is also one of his standout films. Carrey delivers one of his most recognisable performances and completely wipes the floor with his insanely hilarious humour.
Back in the 1990s, Jim Carrey was the figurehead for bizarre and silly humour, being in films such as 'Dumb and Dumber', 'Liar, Liar', and 'The Mask'. However, none of these are as memorable as his role of Ace Ventura. Not your ordinary detective, Ace deals with finding lost or stolen animals and will go to extreme lengths to return them to their rightful owners. The film twists the stereotypical police genre by following Ventura's bizarre career and also replaces the usual serious and aggressive tone of these films with a much more lighthearted and hilarious mood.
Ace Ventura, although being sincerely passionate for all animals, does not take any part of his job remotely seriously. His way of dealing with situations are wacky such as replacing a stolen dog with a stuffed teddy replica. Additionally, he is always cracking jokes along the way, such as screaming 'It's alive' (like in 1931's 'Frankenstein') when his car finally starts.
For the entirety of this film, Carrey never slacks in his enthusiasm and his energy, delivering every line as ardently as any other. He becomes the life force for this film and is hilarious in almost every incident he is in. He never really takes anything seriously which maintains the jovial, lighthearted tone for the whole film and he is never shy to make an absolute fool of himself - in fact, its what makes him so likable. You do not have to wait long before the script shoots another joke after the last. It is this which the film almost falls down. For all the humour it omits, it loses a lot of any emotion other than laughter. Of course, comedy is the film's sole purpose and in this sense it works marvelously. But occasionally, the film tries to push the characters to have some kind of development but this never happens. Any kind of emotion never really works and is almost brushed off with another witty pun or joke. Soon, the jokes come so frequently that half of them are not even funny, and some are even repeated to try and milk the audience for more laughs. It becomes draining because the movie quickly ditches any form of a plot and instead focuses almost exclusively on Carrey. So the audience end up not caring at all about the ending because it is almost pushed to the sidelines and briefly mentioned on a couple of occasions.
The humour does have a few flaws too. Despite being almost consistently hilarious, it does become slightly crude and puts in some unnecessary innuendos (not a massive surprise though, since this is a 90's comedy). It doesn't add anything to the film and is awkward to watch.
On a technical aspect, this film is rather mediocre. There is no attempt to craft a beautiful looking shot or have anything unique. All this film cares about is Carrey and is apathetic to anything else. It is iconic, but only for his character. He never changes in the film however - he starts the same and comes out at the end the same. It tries to rival such spoof comedies as The Naked Gun, but never truly succeeds. It does well in constructing a funny, interesting character who the audience become invested in, and there is no denying that he is a comic genius.
Arguably, the film should not be looked at too critically because it never takes itself seriously. The events in it are bizarre and clearly parodying other films. The audience cares about Ace Ventura because he is treated like an outcast at his work. Additionally he has a caring nature about him especially with his affection for animals. He has all the key traits of a protagonist: a man wanting to do good but gets himself into a dangerous situation.
Ultimately this is a greatly entertaining comedy but don't expect anything spectacular. Be ready to laugh because it never disappoints on this. Jim Carrey is an absolute standout character here and his charismatic, hilarious pet detective is timelessly funny.
Verdict: 7/10
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