Remember how annoying the drama students at your high school were with their Jim Carrey impressions and no “off” switch? That’s nothing compared to the 12-year-old equivalent running for 93 agonizing minutes and passed off as an actual movie: Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective.
Carrey’s comic creation — foisted upon an unsuspecting public in 1994’s surprise smash Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, then quickly followed up by the less grating Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls one year later — is nowhere to be found. But his chunky son, Ace Junior, is. As played by Josh Flitter (Big Momma’s House 2), the “meddling kid” (his own words, mind you) lives with his zookeeper mom (A League of Their Own’s Ann Cusack, for whom I feel sorrow, taking over the Courteney Cox role). I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it, too: deadbeat dad, right? Well, probably, but as Mrs. Ventura puts it, the official word is that Dad disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.
Like father, like son — not in the department of mysterious absences and related lousy excuses, but an undying love of animals and an undiagnosed social disorder. Ace Junior eats his meals from a dog bowl and drinks from a toilet bowl. The nominal story plops the brat in his first “real” case: locating the whereabouts of Ting Tang, the zoo’s stolen (man in an obvious, frightening) panda (costume). Until this mystery, the kid has made his rep tracking down lost household pets, from your average dogs and cats (“Yikes! Tabby’s been nabbied!”) to more exotic companions, like a skunk, which he attempts to subdue by farting in its face — one of three flatulence gags the movie offers in the initial 16 minutes alone.
Best known for 1993’s peculiarly beloved The Sandlot, writer/director David Mickey Evans practically dares us not to loathe his young star from first frame, saddling him with the lines, “I’ve got you now! That’s it, my little misunderstood friend! Nibble the powdery cinnamon bliss!” Fast-forward (hypothetically speaking, because you are not watching this one) to the courtroom scene in which Ace Junior appropriates A Few Good Men’s iconic “You can’t handle the truth!” speech, and Flitter is so amped-up insufferable, you’ve already dug out that old embossing label maker from the kitchen drawer, just so you can slap “TRYING TOO HARD” to his visage onscreen.
Poor Flitter was old enough to know what he was doing, but too young to know how it would play on our side of the camera: like a friggin’ train wreck. He was merely the caboose to Evans’ overencouraging engine, but — and I would never hit a child — you’ll want to punch him all the same. —Rod Lott