(r#45)
There are so many reasons for why I loved the nineties as a decade for movies, and Jim Carrey is one of those reasons. He created so much fantastic comedy during his raging box office career 1994-1999, it was inevitable that his works from 2000 and onward would be a bit of a disappointment. Now I'm not saying Bruce Almighty, The Grinch, Lemony Snicket or Me, Myself and Irene were bad (far from it, in fact), but none of them can hold a candle to his absolutely ingenious stuff from the nineties, Liar Liar, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Batman Forever, and Cable Guy (yes, the Cable guy! You can smite me all you want!) Now I've finally seen the movie that jump-started Carrey's career, Ace Ventura. Ironically I saw almost all of his later comedies before this, which could have been bad. In some cases a comedian doesn't find his ground until he's made a few movies to "warm up". Not so with Carrey! This is arguably his best performance, and it gives him some of the most iconic lines of his entire career. "Alriiiiighty then", would seem like the most obvious mention, but there's also "Looo-hoooo-ser", "Reeaaaa-lly", "If I'm not back in five minutes - just wait longer", "To capture ze dolphin you must zhink like ze dolphin!!", and I'm sure a lot more which I've forgot at the moment.
To put it bluntly, Ace Ventura is possibly the funniest movie you will ever see. And I mean it. Tom Shadyac, who also worked with Carrey on the box office smashes Bruce Almighty and Liar Liar, as well as Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor, knows what the audience wants to see (Hint: it's not extensive character development!), and makes sure that Jim is never off screen for too long, never wasting too much time on the plot (which is of course redundant in these sort of films). No, as much screen time as possible is devoted to Jim shouting, babbling, wailing, coughing, barking, quoting Star Trek and Frankenstein, talking out of his ass, breaking things, and creating as much havoc as possible to the dismay of the more normal characters around him. And damn does it pay off! Totally devoid of the cheesy Hollywood "drama" that plagued Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty, and without the pointless subplots in The Mask that no one cared about anyway, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is precisely what it should be: Pure, unadulterated Carrey madness from beginning to end!
A definite must-see!
