Image Source: Warner Bros
February 4, 1994. You remember where you were? Probably not, actually. But that’s the day this Hawaiian-shirted maniac showed up in theaters and basically turned comedy upside down. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective hit the big screen, and look—nobody expected much. Warner Bros. gave it maybe $15 million to work with. The star was Jim Carrey, who yeah, people knew from In Living Color, but as a movie lead? Total question mark.
Then it opened. And holy cow, did people show up. Your friends told their friends. Their friends dragged their cousins. Weekend after weekend, packed theaters. The thing made $107 million worldwide. Studio suits were floored. Critics were confused. Audiences didn’t care what the critics thought—they just kept buying tickets.
Jim Carrey became Jim Carrey in about two weeks flat.
The Ace Ventura setup (in case you’ve been living under a rock)
Ace Ventura’s a private detective in Miami. But here’s the kicker—he only handles animal cases. Lost parakeet? He’s your man. Missing cat? Call Ace. The guy’s completely obsessed with animals and completely indifferent to normal human behavior.
So when Snowflake—the Miami Dolphins’ real live dolphin mascot—vanishes right before the Super Bowl, somebody decides Ace is the guy to find him. Terrible decision? Maybe. Hilarious decision? Absolutely.
What happens next is just… controlled chaos for about 86 minutes. Wild disguises. Interrogations that make zero sense. Physical comedy that honestly looks like it should’ve sent Carrey to the hospital. But it works. Somehow it all just works.
How Ace Ventura became a comedy phenomenon
The movie never hits the brakes. Not once. It just commits to being completely bonkers and drags you along for the ride.
And Carrey? The man gave everything. Every facial expression looked impossible. Every voice seemed to come from a different dimension. The way he moved defied basic anatomy. He wasn’t dialing it in—he was cranking it up to eleven and then breaking the knob off.
This became required viewing for an entire generation. Always on cable. Everyone’s worn-out VHS copy. That one kid who could quote the whole thing and absolutely would at any opportunity. You probably haven’t thought about this movie in years, but I bet you can still picture at least five scenes right now without even trying.
Random Trivia That’ll Blow Your Mind
Here’s something wild: Carrey co-wrote the screenplay. That’s why Ace feels so specifically… him. The character’s mannerisms, the weird voices, all of it—Carrey had his fingerprints all over the script.
Courteney Cox is in this! Right before Friends made her one of the biggest stars on TV, she was dealing with Ace Ventura’s nonsense in Miami.
Dan Marino shows up playing himself. The actual Dan Marino. In a comedy about a stolen dolphin. The ’90s were just different, man.
Oh, and Cannibal Corpse—yeah, the death metal band—they’re in this movie. That really happened. Nobody can explain why, but it did.
Everything That Came After
Hollywood saw those box office numbers and did what Hollywood does. When Nature Calls came out. An animated series showed up on Saturday mornings. Some TV movie happened that honestly most people forgot about immediately. The whole thing turned into a franchise, all from this one weird comedy that started as basically a studio experiment.
Watch the original theatrical trailer
Want to Watch It Again?
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is pretty much everywhere at this point. DVD and Blu-ray if you’re into physical media. Digital if that’s your thing. Currently streaming on both Tubi and Netflix if you just want to fire it up right now.
