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Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 2:36 am
by DRW.mov
Ah yes, because Ace Ventura holds up so well today. 🙄

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 3:16 am
by tenia
I don't know how it's holding up, but it's still has its fandom, and I don't doubt a lavish release would sell nicely.
In any case, "not holding up" never seemed a factor for Arrow not to release a movie.

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:07 am
by DRW.mov
Well considering they put out Sixteen Candles without batting an eye I shouldn’t be surprised, but AV:PD has much less cultural significance and much more harmfully offensive content.
Get a trans film critic to be interviewed on the disc and then we’ll talk.

Criterion is smart to cover their bases in this way on Shanghai Express, Swing Time, Straw Dogs, and the like. It’d be a shame if Arrow failed to as well.

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:15 am
by nitin
Arrow’s usual releases probably have as much ‘harmful offensive content’ though (and I have no interest in this movie fwiw).

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:05 pm
by domino harvey
I doubt the primary audience for Ace Ventura has any interest in being chided in a bonus feature for this

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:31 pm
by swo17
I don't know what context there is to provide besides this
Jim Carrey wrote:I wanted to keep the action unreal and over the top. When it came time to do my reaction to kissing a man, I wanted it to be the biggest, most obnoxious, homophobic reaction ever recorded. It's so ridiculous it can't be taken seriously--even though it guarantees that somebody's going to be offended.

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 1:42 pm
by DRW.mov
swo17 wrote: ↑
Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:31 pm
I don't know what context there is to provide besides this
Jim Carrey wrote:I wanted to keep the action unreal and over the top. When it came time to do my reaction to kissing a man, I wanted it to be the biggest, most obnoxious, homophobic reaction ever recorded. It's so ridiculous it can't be taken seriously--even though it guarantees that somebody's going to be offended.
....that, for a dozen reasons, only makes it worse

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:54 pm
by colinr0380
Here's probably one of the more contentious scenes (major spoilers for the ending of the film) To play a bit of a devil's advocate that reaction specifically also seems a dig at the then contemporary Crying Game 'revelation' scene of running off to the toilet to vomit in disgust (to the extent of playing the theme tune over the disgusted reactions), which was treated without much criticism at the time, so I'd give that a bit of a pass for at least highlighting the absurdly over the top nature of such a reaction! I'm less thrilled about the rather flippant and cruel dismissive treatment of Sean Young's character as a whole though (even if the character does get to brutally beat up Ventura just before!), but then that could be argued to be the way that many comedy films in their haste to celebrate the victory often end up treating their antagonists as less than human once their heroes inevitably gain the upper hand again.

There's also that sense that this is in the vein of the Naked Gun films and those moments where Frank Drebin is 'accidentally' humiliating someone in front of his colleagues whilst trying to be believed, but the difference is perhaps that Leslie Nielsen plays Frank as much more bumbling and out of touch such that he could actually be a buffoon who might not be entirely cogniscent of what he is doing, whilst there was always that element of punchable smug and self-assured cockiness to Carrey's performances in the Ace Ventura films and The Mask. Which The Mask got away with to a certain extent by making it seem like that was part of the general Nutty Professor-esque transformation from dweeb into lothario rather than the entirely being the behaviour of the hero, but there's no such mitigating factor in the Ace Ventura films.

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:17 pm
by domino harvey
Nielsen’s Drebin participated in a far more specific parallel to this movie’s contentious element in Naked Gun 33 1/3 when he sees Anna Nicole Smith’s penis and is induced to vomit— I think it’s obvious that the mid 90s weren’t exactly a haven of tolerance in comedy (see: anything from Carrey’s own launching pad, In Living Color)

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:30 am
by colinr0380
I think that moment was probably also a weird tribute (criticism?) of the weirdly influential (if only to comedy films) scene in The Crying Game. I'm sure there was also that moment around the same period in The Simpsons (the "Who Shot Mr Burns" episode?) in which Groundskeeper "Willie" does the whole Basic Instinct routine in his kilt and all the cops gag too! Which suggests it was the go to, ultimate in low hanging fruit, gag for comedy writers around that time.

This is probably the only Troma Film that I will particularly praise, but Blondes Have More Guns (NSFW) did this whole early 90s erotic thriller parody thing the best, mostly because they were able to add the nudity that these other films only coyly hint at in shadow!

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:57 pm
by domino harvey
Oddly, despite the creator’s contentious recent comments, Father Ted’s take seems to be the only comic approach to the Crying Game not to be in bad taste!

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 7:00 am
by Orlac
Was Sean Young seen as a liability by this pont, following the Batman Returns debacle? The film seems to delight in tormenting her more so than tormenting a transgender villian.

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:57 am
by colinr0380
domino harvey wrote: ↑
Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:57 pm
Oddly, despite the creator’s contentious recent comments, Father Ted’s take seems to be the only comic approach to the Crying Game not to be in bad taste!
On a bit of a tangent but I like that the Father Ted gag is also using its comedy in service of the wider comic statement of the episode too, which is that all these elderly locals know that if you want to keep abreast of the really dirty films that are coming out, you just need to keep going to church for the inside track on them! And that being a church regular should not particularly stop you 'morally' from checking out a film in your own free time if you so wish, whatever others may say or whether there is a campaign to ban it! (I would guess that the Father Ted episode was inspired by The Last Temptation of Christ furore, with setting a banning campaign against it on a tiny, isolated island being comically satirical in itself! A couple of years after that episode Nigel Wingrove's naughty nun film Sacred Flesh actually got caught up in a full blown blasphemy debate. I suppose however it was difficult to anticipate that the ultimate 'torture porn' film, The Passion of the Christ, would be met with rapturous praise rather than horror from Christian groups when it came out a few years later!)

It is kind of a perennial statement too: just this weekend in the otherwise rather pro-censorship, anti-pornography Daily Mail they ran an article on the state of UK television and particularly the way that there is apparently rather too much male rear nudity going on in a lot of highly acclaimed primetime television series at the moment. Which was 'helpfully' accompanied by an artfully composed full colour montage of stills of male bottoms from Peaky Blinders, The Bodyguard, etc to graphically illustrate their point and fill the reader in on just what filth (that presumably would have flashed by in a couple of seconds in the programme itself) that they missed out on by not watching!

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2019 3:02 pm
by thirtyframesasecond
domino harvey wrote: ↑
Sat Sep 14, 2019 12:57 pm
Oddly, despite the creator’s contentious recent comments, Father Ted’s take seems to be the only comic approach to the Crying Game not to be in bad taste!
Linehan's been accused of transphobia and there's an episode of the IT Crowd where Matt Berry's character dates a woman who he believes is from Iran (she said she actually used to be a man). So I wouldn't be surprised if some look back at Father Ted through less than rose tinted glasses.

Re: Forthcoming: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:05 pm
by Finch
That bit where Matt Berry and the transwoman beat the shit out of each other felt pretty nasty.