Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Alrighty then. A pet detective in a Hawaiian shirt talks out of his own rear end, rescues the Miami Dolphins' kidnapped mascot, and turns a $15 million comedy into the launchpad of Jim Carrey's insane 1994. Critics hated it; recess quoted it for years.
Released on February 4, 1994, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was director Tom Shadyac's debut, written by Jack Bernstein with Shadyac and Jim Carrey himself — and it was built entirely around Carrey's rubber face. The plot is almost beside the point: Ace, Miami's only pet detective, investigates the kidnapping of the Miami Dolphins' mascot dolphin in the run-up to the Super Bowl. What mattered was the delivery system — the pompadour, the Hawaiian shirts, the talking-through-the-butt bit, and a catchphrase, 'Alrighty then!', that immediately colonized every schoolyard in America.
Critics were not amused. Reviews ran generally unfavorable — Roger Ebert called it 'a long, unfunny slog' — even as the Washington Post's Rita Kempley broke ranks to declare it 'a riot from start to finish.' Audiences sided with Kempley: made for about $15 million, the film grossed $72.2 million domestically and $107.2 million worldwide. And it was only the opening act. The Mask and Dumb and Dumber followed in the same calendar year, a one-two-three that pushed Carrey's 1994 releases to a combined $550 million and made him the year's second-highest-grossing star behind Tom Hanks — the most sudden comedy-star arrival of the decade.
The franchise machinery kicked in fast: a sequel, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, arrived in 1995, and an animated Ace Ventura series ran from 1995 to 2000. The original's reputation still splits along the same line it did in 1994 — critics see a one-joke movie, and everyone who was twelve remembers the joke.
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