Ace Ventura — Super Analyst?
Elaborate Lessons from A Pet Detective
Human mind is an interesting system. Spend a little time contemplating accountability and feedback models and suddenly your brain will start highlighting examples all around you. So finding strong examples while watching Ace Ventura with my daughter shouldn’t be that shocking. Less so given that feedback and accountability (or lack there or) essentially dominate most everyday experiences.
What makes Ace article-worthy is the emphasis the movie, character, and actor placed on these two models. Although perhaps emphasis is the wrong word? Their usage is elaborate, eccentric, and over-the-top in a way that could only be brought to you by Jim Carrey. Alrighty then! Let’s get started.
A Little Background on the Movie
Overly exaggerated deep breadth! Ace Ventura, the character played by the a-fore-mentioned Jim Carrey, is a pet detective in the Miami, Florida area who is called in to help the Miami Dolphins, current Superbowl contenders, locate their recently kidnapped mascot, Snowflake. During the course of his investigation, Ace finds a connection to the 1984 Dolphin’s team, who lost their Superbowl appearance due to a missed field goal try. During the course of his mis-adventures, Ace runs afoul of the local police department, becomes party to a murder investigation, is committed to a mental institution, and eventually finds the kidnappers, who have at this point also abducted Dan Marino. Breath again.
Accountability
In a recent article, I developed a very clear definition of accountability:
Accountability is being expected to prove, in a measurable way, that your decisions are right in order to gain reward or avoid punishment.
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective takes accountability to a new and perverse level. In the movie, the Dolphin’s former kicker, Ray Finkle, holds placeholder Dan Marino accountable for the missed kick in 1984.
Ray is hell-bent on punishing Marino to the extent of assuming the identity of a lost hiker in order to infiltrate the police department and plot her revenge when the Dolphin’s return to prominence nearly a decade later. If there was ever a commitment to enforcing accountability, Finkle is an obsession.
Feedback and Connections
If the antagonist of this story is obsessed with accountability, our quirky protagonist is a case study in elaborate connected systems. Ace is able to take a handful of minor clues and concoct a detailed and colorful story of causality and connection. About the only thing Ace has a hard-time connecting is Finkle and Einhorn.
Aside from elaborate acts of detective-style storytelling, Ace gives us plenty of other examples of complicated connections. In fairness, this is a man who turns “loser” into a four syllable word. But even his mission impossible-style spy moments bare a striking resemblance to a Rube Goldberg Machine. Each action is intricately connected to the next in an odd series of elaborate and overly complicated behaviors.
In an odd twist, this behavior is equally striking for its total isolation from the real world around him. Ace seems to be so hyper-focused on his stories and outcomes that he fails to recognize how extravagant and unnecessary so much of his behavior is. This is used to comical advantage, although some of these bits get a little old after the second or third watching. To some degree, the same could be said for Jim Carrey.
This lack of sensitivity to feedback around him leads to plenty of awkward moments. It also gives us the joy of slow motion football in a tutu, hand-propeller speed boating, and the UPS delivery guy from hell. All great bits precisely because of their total avoidance of obvious feedback and a complete lack of accountability.
Ace Ventura was a great movie in the 90s. In reruns, perhaps it has lost a bit. But if you view the movie as a lesson in accountability and feedback, you can take something new (and probably unexpected) from this fun comedy and its talented star. One word of warning, there are some adult situations, so if you do choose to watch it with your daughter, watch the network version or keep the fast forward handy.
