Ace Ventura I & II Collection: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective / Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (DVD)
APPROX. 250 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 0 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" For the Ace Ventura admirer, WB's three-disc set, with its first-class picture and sound, is a blessing. For me, it was three discs too many.
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Disc Two: "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls"
Given the huge receipts for the first movie in 1994, Warner Bros. doubled the budget for this sequel in 1995. For their trouble, they got half as funny a film.
Given, too, that I didn't care all that much for the original, you can perhaps understand how much less I liked "When Nature Calls." Everything the filmmakers thought worked in the first film they exaggerate in the second. When you consider that there was almost no subtlety involved the first time around, it gives you idea of the follow-up. The filmmakers even make Ace's hair more preposterously stylized. The director, Steve Oedekerk, went on to do "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" and "Barnyard." Maybe he works best with cartoon or cartoonish characters. Here, he seems content to leave Carrey to his own ego and not get in the way.
This time out, we find Ace in Africa, where he is trying to locate a Great White Sacred Bat that's gone missing. If he can't find it, it will mean a civil war between two rival tribes. The funniest scene is in a Buddhist monastery, where Ace has gone to recover from a disheartening experience. When a fellow shows up looking to hire him and take him away on a new case, the monks jump for joy. Unfortunately, their gain is our loss; we have to live with the character for the next hour or more.
The rest of the movie is a series of pratfalls and manic reactions. The running joke is the way Ace parks a Land Rover by rolling it over several times before settling it, one side up or the other, in a parking space. I found these scenes jaw-droppingly awful, but they are about the best we've got. The movie makes a couple of TV and movie references that border on sly--Carrey's William Shatner imitation from "The Twilight Zone" ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"), his rendition of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," and bits related to "Secret Agent" and "Mr. Belvedere." But it's only passing. Most of the time, the moviemakers seem to mistake political incorrectness for humor, hoping to get laughs from native tribesmen spitting in one another's face as a sign of friendship. When a film expects me to chuckle at actors spitting on each other, I figure it's time to move on.
By the second half of "When Nature Calls," the jokes have gotten so bad, so humorless, so appallingly dreadful that the movie becomes downright hard to sit through. Thank heaven for the pause button and the few dozen breaks that helped relieve the pain. 2/10
Video:
Like "Pet Detective," "When Nature Calls" sports a new digital transfer, this one also done up at a high bit rate and enhanced for widescreen TVs. The big difference is in screen size, where the newer film was shown theatrically at a 2.40:1 ratio to the earlier film's 1.85:1. On disc, "When Nature Calls" measures about 2.15:1 across my television. As on the companion disc, the definition is sharp, the colors are bright and natural, and the grain is even lighter. They are both excellent transfers.
Audio:
Like the picture quality, the sound on this second disc is a tad better than on the first. Again it's mastered in DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1, this time revealing a bigger bass and oodles of rear-channel activity. In fact, the bass, surround, and dynamics are sometimes too much of a good thing, bordering on overwhelming the rest of the movie.
Extras:
There is no director commentary on this one, but there are again a fullscreen theatrical trailer and TV spots; English as the only spoken language; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and thirty-five scene selections but no chapter insert.
Disc Three: "Ace Ventura: The Animated Series"
The real bonus in the set is this third disc, containing three episodes from the 1996 animated television show. The episodes last a little over twenty minutes or so each and include "The Rein-Deer Hunter," "Natural Born Koalas," and "Dragon Guy." They are in 1.33:1, television fullscreen dimensions and sport a Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack.
The animation style is not very sophisticated, Jim Carrey does not lend his voice to Ace, and not even the characters' lip movements seem to match the vocals. After a few minutes with each show, I decided to quit watching them altogether.
Parting Shots:
In "Dumb & Dumber" Jim Carrey had a funny partner and plenty of funny dialogue, and in "The Mask" he had a clever script and clever special effects. In the "Ace Ventura" movies he has nothing funny to say and nothing funny to do. For the "Ace Ventura" admirer, WB's three-disc set, with its first-class picture and sound, is a blessing. For me, it was three discs too many.
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