What A Nutter! (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (DVD)
Date:	10/05/01 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see review

Disadvantages: see review

Written and produced back in the days when Jim Carey was new, fresh and genuinely funny, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was a wild success with movie goers world-wide, despite the movie being panned by many critics. Carey’s antics translated from the little screen on “In Living Color” to the cinema screens drew in massive crowds and marked him as someone to look out for in the future. Well, since then he has gone on to bigger and better(and far worse) things, but Ace Ventura remains the role in which I at least always visualise him whenever someone mentions his name.

The story behind Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is actually pretty lame to say the least. Jim Carey plays Ace Ventura, a private detective who specialises in cases involving animals. In fact he only gets involved in animal cases, caring more for them than for hunam beings - and they love him right back. A modern day doctor doolittle, with more than a few screws loose and a fair number of bats loose in his belfry, Ace is called upon when the team mascot for the Miami Dolphins goes missing. Ace springs into actions and when their star quarterback Dan Marino also disappears he goes hot on the trail, falling for Dolphin’s staff member Mellisa(Courtney Cox) along the way.

Like I said, its a pretty lame plot, but it didn’t really need to be anything special with Jim Carey in this kind of form, Delightfully juvenile, he plays his eccentric role in an enormously over-the-top fashion which you just can not help but we won over by. The problem now when watching Carey is that you know the eccentric rubber-faced loonatic you see on your screens is not to far away from the eccentric rubber-faced loonatic who walks the streets off the scree, but here it doesn’t matter. Going through the complete range of silly slapstick humour, grotesque face pulling and loony voices, Carey’s performance is masterful. The rest of the cast are pretty much incidental because this is
nothing more than a star vehicle through which Carey is allowed to show off his talents. Courtney Cox is the other only ‘big’ name star, unless you include Dan Marino playing himself, and her performance is decidedly average.

The script is lacklustre, the plot silly, the settings even sillier and overall this is a movie which with any other lead character would have bombed without a trace. However, instead what you end up with is the largest grossing movies of 1994 and easily one of the funniest movies of the 90s. Its hugely enjoyable and highly recommended to all fans of the kind of juvenile nonsense that this guy is so good at.

Summary: