Before "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective" went through the box-office roof, critics all over the country were comparing Jim Carrey to Jerry Lewis . . . if an extremely vulgar version of Jerry Lewis.
I wasn't so complimentary, however. In my 1994 review I compared Carrey to Jim Varney's ever-obnoxious Ernest P. Worrell, adding that "a little of Jim Carrey's mugging goofiness goes a long way - and 90 minutes is way too long.""Dumb & Dumber" (1994) and the sequel to "Ace Ventura" (1995) also left me cold. If there was a rating lower than "turkey," I'd have used it.
Of course, moviegoers didn't care what critics had to say. Each successive exercise in raunchy stupidity made more money than the one before, and Carrey's core audience increased. In fact, before you could say "Alrighty then!" he was the highest-paid movie star in the Hollywood galaxy.
But the real-life Carrey isn't as dumb as his screen persona. He knew that to sustain a career he would have to reach beyond an audience that falls on the floor when he talks with his backside. So he began looking for material that was a bit more serious. (Keeping in mind that a live-action "Beavis and Butt-Head" movie would be more serious.)
Carrey's first step in this direction was "The Cable Guy," but it proved to be too dark and weird, alienating his core audience without bringing in anyone new.
The second was "Liar Liar," a bit more adult in its approach but with enough silliness to please his die-hard fans. The surprising result was that "Liar Liar" lengthened his demographic reach.
Now comes "The Truman Show," which isn't so much a Jim Carrey Movie as a movie that stars Jim Carrey. That is, it's a sly satire, not at all raunchy and with . . . dare we say it? . . . a sophisticated comedic approach.
"The Truman Show" is the media satire that "The Cable Guy" wanted to be. But where the latter is a dingy, scary, unpleasant movie, the former is deceptively light and airy and utterly enjoyable. "Truman" has a lot going on - it says a lot, it entertains a lot and it has every right to be one of the year's most critically acclaimed and popular films.
But will Carrey's fans get it, after being weaned on his idiot flicks? Will they go? And will they return again and again?
More importantly, will non-fans go - those who wouldn't be caught dead at a "Dumb & Dumber" sequel.
With "The Truman Show," Carrey has already earned the respect of the critics, and he stands poised to earn the respect of a wide moviegoing audience as well.
In fact, he's starting to look a lot less like Jerry Lewis and a lot more like Danny Kaye.
Lewis was strictly a big-kid-in-an-adult-body for most of his movie career, playing out a wacky persona he referred to as "the monkey" in films ranging from his late-'40s Martin & Lewis musical-comedies to "The Nutty Professor" (1963).
But in the mid-'60s, Lewis tried to reinvent himself with a somewhat more adult - albeit equally frantic - persona. He teamed with Tony Curtis for the romantic comedy "Boeing Boeing" (1965), played a psychiatrist opposite Janet Leigh in the adult farce "Three on a Couch" (1966) and even plowed through a racy sci-fi spoof, "Way . . . Way Out" (1966), with Connie Stevens. All of them flopped.
During the '70s, Lewis virtually disappeared. But he re-emerged in 1983 when Martin Scorsese cast him opposite Robert De Niro in "The King of Comedy." A few minor dramatic roles followed, but the "serious" Lewis proved too glum and surly to gain much of a following.
Danny Kaye put his zany persona onscreen in the mid-'40s, with equally wacky musical farces. And in 1949, he adopted a more sober tone for "Hans Christian Andersen" - a character with whom he is still identified.
Having proven he could handle dramatic material, Kaye was doing both by the mid-'50s - vacillating between broad comedies like "The Court Jester" (1956) and "On the Double" (1961), and more weighty characterizations in "Me and the Colonel" (1958) and "The Five Pennies" (1959).
This would seem to be the direction Carrey is headed. And if "The Truman Show" is any indication, he's certainly got the talent to carry it off.
Of course, it helped to have a disciplined director to keep him in line.
Let's hope Carrey just says no to "Dumb & Dumber II" and "Ace Ventura III."