ACE'S LOW

By RICHARD CORLISS

THE WEEKEND BEFORE LAST, moviegoers spent $37.8 million to see the new Jim Carrey comedy, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls--more money than the combined take of Nos. 2 through 20 on the box-office list. Few films have achieved such instant dominance, and certainly none so awful as this sequel, about the pet detective's trip to Africa to find a precious white bat and prevent a war between two backward tribes. Nearly the best one can say of Ace 2 is that it's blithely, ceaselessly racist.

In The Mask, Dumb & Dumber and Batman Forever, the star created a maniacally precise comic style. Here--well, he works hard. In the 105 minutes of Ace 2, Carrey rides an ostrich; feeds an eaglet mouth to mouth; emerges from the anus of a mechanical rhino; makes his eyebrows move like kooky caterpillars; bends over and utters the Tarzan cry through his rear; sneezes on, spits at and blows paper wads into the faces of various African men; and sings Chitty Chitty Bang Bang several times more than is absolutely necessary.

This review is not the cry of a prude. Frankly, we don't care if a joke's funny as long as it's dirty. But in switching writer-directors, from the first film's Tom Shadyac to Steve Oedekerk, Carrey lost a clever farceur and got what Ace would call a la-hoo-za-her (loser). The star plays more than ever to himself; the cast stands around starched and embarrassed, like white-tie judges at a wet-T shirt contest. Wearying, stupefying, dumber than dumb, When Nature Calls would be a career ender for Carrey--except that a zillion people have seen it. Stop this, folks. It'll only encourage him.