Ace Ventura - Pet Detective

With the recent release of the Ace Ventura movies on blu-ray, I thought I would go ahead and make this the first movie I talk about here.  Now, I haven't watched my copy of the movie on blu-ray yet, but I have read the reviews, and they seem to have (once again) cut out the extended scenes they put in for the VHS release and the 4:3 DVD release. But, you can just watch those scenes on youtube. Other than that, though, this movie is excellent. It was first released in 1994, with Jim Carrey coming off the high that In Living Color (from the Wayans brothers) gave him. It co-stars Courteney Cox (right before Friends launched, seriously, the movie came out in February of 1994, and the Friends Pilot hit in September of 1994) as his love interest/plot driving force.

The movie has some crude humor in it (most notably the scene when the rather busty woman "thanks" him for retrieving her dog, and the rather extended "love" scene later in the movie featuring a shaking bed and animals watching, and "pillow talk" -- but no nudity is seen in those scenes).  It does feature brief (male) nudity when we see Jim Carrey's rear-end as he gets into the shower recreating a scene from the Crying Game (NOT a movie I recommend on this blog, by the way, hence no link).

Overall, the movie is very light, and very silly. Even though it features talk of murder, and shows characters preparing to do murder -- nothing ever comes of it, and you don't ever feel a real sense of danger for the characters (Ace is shown catching a bullet in his TEETH during one scene, for crying out loud). One character is killed off-screen, but we don't see anything, it is just referred to. The movie carries a PG-13 rating, but this would be one of the few times that I disagree with the rating, in that I think it should have been rated less restrictive (usually I think movies get away with a PG-13 rating that should have been R) -- it isn't a G movie to be sure, but I think it could have gotten a PG with slightly different editing. I am sure what got it the rating was the shower-scene male rear-end nudity, and the "love" scene bed shaking stuff, and none of that was severe enough to rate a PG-13 in my mind. If you have younger children, by all means watch it first on your own and judge for yourself, but I stand by my assessment that this is a silly PG movie with a few brief PG-13 scenes in it.

I love this movie, and it is one of those movies I am always willing to have on in the background, or just to put on for a laugh. Jim Carry is at the height of his comedy brilliance in this movie, (and the sequel, When Nature Calls, which I will talk about separately). If you are looking for a silly comedy, and you haven't seen Ace Ventura yet, do yourself a favor and pick it up and watch it today!