YMMV / Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The entire plot to claim the Wachati's bat nesting caves seems... just another joke, right? Wrong. The phosphate trade makes 75 billion dollar a year. Throughout the 20th century, the primary source was Pacific islands, which are now almost depleted - some to the point that the islands themselves are all but erased. Any large source of concentrated phosphates would make a gold mine look like a lemonade stand.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening sequence, where Ace rescues a raccoon stranded on a mountain. Appropriately, it's grand in scope and exciting.
  • "SHIKAKA!!!" is a catchy song that gives a vibe of Autobots, Rock Out!
  • Pato Banton's version of The Police's "Spirits in the Material World" is an ethereal-sounding and catchy song that fits the sequel's atmosphere well. It also helps that Banton's voice at times sounds eerily similar to Sting's.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Cadby gets his comeuppance in the film by getting raped by a gorilla. It's equal parts hilarious, disturbing and bizarre.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The scene where Ace takes a spear to the knee... twice.
  • When Cadby is raped by a gorilla, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" plays over the scene, long preceding the widespread use of the song in memes depicting a sudden unfavorable outcome.
  • The opening scene is a parody of Cliffhanger and features a raccoon. Cliffhanger starred Sylvester Stallone and Michael Rooker, who later reunited in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2... which also features a raccoon.
• Parody Displacement: The opening scene with the raccoon is a direct parody of Cliffhanger. However given that this movie is far better remembered and easier to find in syndication it’s likely many years later that newer viewers are unaware that it’s a parody at all.
• Retroactive Recognition: The main guard, the often voiceless Hitu, from the second film is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adebisi and Mr. Eko himself (then credited as just "Adewale").
• Sequelitis: The second movie is often found not necessarily awful (it still has its share of Funny Moments), but largely inferior, particularly for relying on more Toilet Humor and making Ace more of a jerkass. Notably, Carrey detested working on it so much that it directly lead to his declaration that he would never do a sequel to one of his own movies ever again. (he only changed it for Dumb and Dumber To, which got a middling reception... and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), where he's the villain).
• Squick:
  • The scene where his fake rhino's air conditioner fails, forcing him to stick his head out, and when it does people watching the rhino are shocked to see a rhino give birth to Ace. Did we mention that he's naked at the time? The scene actually gets cut in some broadcasts of the movie.
  • The scene in which Ace pounds a heavily pregnant tribeswoman's belly, causing her baby to rocket out of her vagina and land in a fellow tribesman's lap. This scene likewise gets cut in some broadcasts.
  • The main antagonist Cadby ultimately ends up getting his karmic punishment in the form of gorilla rape. After the gorilla grabs him, it cuts to some bushes shaking while "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" plays over it. We thankfully don't see any detail, but the implications are...quite unsavory.
• Special Effect Failure: The explosive used to flip Ace's jeep in the second film is very conspicuous when it goes off.
• Tear Jerker: That first scene in the sequel when a raccoon Ace was determined to save breaks loose and falls. It's supposed to be a parody of the opening of Cliffhanger but for some people this doesn't help to make the scene funny at all (it's not like the original scene was exactly ripe for mockery, being both highly tragic and more than a little frightening). Granted it is possible to see it as Black Comedy when Ace attempts to grab its paw as if it's a human hand or him becoming so despondent afterwards that he becomes a monk in Tibet, but it may not be enough to make up for the sadness of seeing an innocent animal fall to its death.

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