Dogs Farting is the Funniest Thing in the World for Children but Leaves Me Uninspired

Ace Ventura Pet Detective Jr. is a film of small victories. It’s not a good film; it will never find itself on an IMBD Top One Hundred list. Unless that list is something like: Top One Hundred films which feature a farting dog, and even then there’s bound to be better farting dog films than this. It’s not even really the kind of film which might one day achieve something approaching cult status; this is not the film people will bring out when someone suggests a bad movie night. No, Ace Ventura Pet Detective Jr. is the kind of film that makes people say: “There was a third movie? Wow.” But it is a film of small victories. I stand by that. I did not come out of the film feeling regretful or as though I had just wasted an hour and thirty minutes of my life. I wasn’t elated, let’s not kid ourselves, but I wasn’t disgusted. As much of a cash-grab as the film almost certainly was, there were some redeeming features which raise it above the other cheap DVD’s you’ve never heard of.
   Josh Flitter as the titular Ace Ventura Jr. is just a delight. I cannot stress enough how much he made this film for me. I went in expecting fart jokes and bullies falling in the mud, and instead I got a kid channelling Jim Carrey at his hammiest. It’s not just that Josh repeats some of Jim Carrey’s classic catchphrases; somehow the kid manages to match Carrey’s frenetic energy. The quick movements, the snappy one liners, it’s all there. The other performances leave something to be desired, Ace’s cohorts for his Pet Detecting consists of a nerdy kid called A-Plus and a girl who was so boring I have genuinely forgotten her name and refuse to look it up. Neither child puts a great deal of passion into their performances, and when they’re acting around Flitter they just become background noise. 

   The plot is hackneyed and clichéd. I wholeheartedly believe you could probably guess it with minimal to no prompting on my part. Ace Ventura Jr. is an everyday child who loves animals, a panda goes missing, Ace Ventura discovers the culprit is exactly who you thought it would be. It’s typical children’s movie fare and really I shouldn’t have expected anything less. This is a good time, however, to bring up the confusing connections this film has to the rest of the Ace Ventura cannon. So in this film Ace Ventura Jr. is the child of the original Ace Ventura. At a pivotal point in the film Ace Ventura Jr’s mother imparts onto him the knowledge that the original Ace Ventura died in a plane accident trying to save some geese. It is also heavily implied that the reason Ace Ventura Jr. is so skilled with Animal Detecting is due to some kind of mutant “Ventura Gene” which all those of the Ventura Bloodline carry. I question the rationale behind making your films subplot more or less revolve around the fact that your star power is gone. They keep mentioning Jim Carrey’s Ace, reminding the audience of how great a time we had with him back in the first two films, which in turn makes us realize how rubbish the film we’re watching is. It’s all very strange. 

   I scoured the film for some interesting use of cinematography, some amazing example of editing or sound that I could either praise or criticise. Unfortunately I came up more or less naught. The film is intercut with sound effects, which, in stark contrast to what one would assume, actually made the film feel a little punchier and snappier, if detracting from the films credibility. Half way through the film Ace Ventura Jr. is bequeathed a key to the attic, within which is an outfit almost exactly identical to Ace Ventura’s from the first two films. This was entertaining, but only briefly. I think the film says it best itself when, at one point in one of the many interactions Ace Ventura Jr. has with security guards, the security guard says: “someone get this cartoon out of here.” He is a cartoon, and, in a way, so was Carrey. But Carrey’s Ventura was a cartoon in a more or less non cartoony world, he was an oddball and everyone else was normal. This film is one big cartoon, with sound effects and wackiness around every corner. But like I said before, little victories, if you’re at a little cousins house, or a child’s birthday party and this is the film that comes on, don’t despair, Josh Flitter is awesome and manic, and at several points a dog farts.