Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

"He's the best there is! (Actually, he's the only one there is.)"

1994 1h 26m EN

👍

6.6

SOLID

★6.6TMDB · 6,613

ComedyCrimeMystery

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

He's Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The Ace is on the case to find the Miami Dolphins' missing mascot and quarterback Dan Marino. He goes eyeball to eyeball with a man-eating shark, stakes out the Miami Dolphins and woos and wows the ladies. Whether he's undercover, under fire or underwater, he always gets his man… or beast!

“He's the best there is! (Actually, he's the only one there is.)”

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Cast

Jim Carrey
Ace Ventura
Courteney Cox
Melissa
Sean Young
Einhorn
Tone Loc
Emilio
Dan Marino
Dan Marino
Noble Willingham
Riddle
Troy Evans
Podacter
Raynor Scheine
Woodstock

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Tom Shadyac
Writers: Jack Bernstein, Jim Carrey, Tom Shadyac
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

86 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Made its money back 7.1× over at the box office.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

32 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "Ace Ventura Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

CAST

Did you know

212+ people credited in cast and crew — a small city's worth of labour.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Tom Shadyac, shot by Julio Macat. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Ira Newborn. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Don Zimmerman shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Tom Shadyac directs. Julio Macat behind the camera. Ira Newborn scores. Don Zimmerman cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

186 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.
2Made its money back 7.1× over at the box office.
332 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
4Part of the "Ace Ventura Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
5212+ people credited in cast and crew — a small city's worth of labour.
6Directed by Tom Shadyac, shot by Julio Macat. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
7Original score by Ira Newborn. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
8Editor Don Zimmerman shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
9Jim Carrey and Courteney Cox and Sean Young carry the top of the cast.
10Marketing tagline: "He's the best there is! (Actually, he's the only one there is.)".
11IMDB entry: tt0109040 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
12Classified under 10 themes, including "miami, florida", "dolphin", "detective", "human animal relationship".

The technical file

Cinematography: Julio Macat
Original score: Ira Newborn
Editing: Don Zimmerman
Production design: William A. Elliott
Costume design: Bobbie Read
Makeup / hair: Jay Cannistraci
Sound: Michael Hilkene
Stunt coordinator: Artie Malesci
Runtime: 86 min · 1h 26m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $15,000,000
Box office: $107,217,396
Return: 715% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG-13
IMDB: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

Part of

Ace Ventura Collection

A comedy film series featuring Ace Ventura, an eccentric Miami-based private detective who specializes in retrieval of tame and captive animals.

Also by

Tom Shadyac

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Andre Gonzales2023-04-06
★ 8/10
One of the funniest movies of all time. Still to this day, every time I watch it, I can't help but laugh. One of my favorite movies of all time.
Filipe Manuel Neto2023-08-03
★ 9/10
Jim Carrey is the movie. Jim Carrey is one of the great comic actors of the 90's, and this film is one of those that opened the doors of stardom for him. He already worked with comedy before, of course, as an actor and stand-up artist, and he took advantage of this background to build Ace, an animal detective with eccentric habits and manners. In general, this type of comedy is not to my liking, but I have to recognize Carrey's enormous qualities and talent. In cooperation with director Tom Shadyac (I don't know if it was the first, but there were several throughout their career), the actor did a truly inspired job that gives the film all its strength and originality. Imagining this movie without Carrey is impossible. Sure, there's a lot of exaggeration, and the rest of the cast is driven to exaggerate, trying to keep up with the protagonist's bizarreness, but that's a minor problem, in my opinion. The film also has good cinematography, which makes good use of the scenarios and chosen filming locations. The pace of the film is quite fast and the feeling that remains is that the film could have gone on longer and a lot of things would have been cut on the editor's table. For me, the great weakness of this film turns out to be the script, involving the sudden disappearance of the mascot of a baseball club – a dolphin. The strength of the protagonist actor and the originality of his character end up transforming the whole story into a detail without much force, a mere pretext for Carrey to do all that.