INTRODUCTION: Netflix uploaded the first Ace Ventura movie and I haven’t seen this movie since the early 2000’s at least. Recently the movie has been conversed about as being dated and transphobic, but is that really true? Does the movie even hold up enough to deserve scorn or praise?

PLOT: An estranged football player tries to get revenge on Dan Mariano.

CHARACTERS: I wouldn’t say they are shallow, but I think it isn’t overly obvious that these characters are probably mostly memorable due to likable actors playing them.

ACTING: All solid with the weakest being Tone-Loc but barley. His acting is substantially better than his rapping.

STYLE: Looks like every 90’s comedy. Its bright and alive, which adds levity to a plot, that even though it is a comedy, is pretty dark.

DIALOUGE: Fine, funny. Occasionally clever.

HUMOR: dumb humor, but it works. Just north of juvenilia, but south of George Carlin.

CONCLUSION: This movie still holds up and represents the older, higher budget comedies of the time, which died and were revived with movies like The Hangover. It isn’t transphobic, given that the heavy isn’t transgender. He is a deceptive person, hell-bent on revenge against Dan Marino, who he believed screwed him out of a Super Bowl win and dressed as a women to deceive everyone, which is not the same thing as being transgender. He has multiple comorbidities, transgender is not one of them. In the day and age of ego fragility, this movie is actually more poignant than ever, as it was the first to deal, albeit not with depth or sensitivity, the coddled mind set of the baby boomer generation, which is clearly genetic and not a cause of rearing.

This movie is laces out and a 3.5 out of 5.