The movie Jim Carrey felt “misled the audience”
After he went from relative unknown to A-list superstar in less than a year, audiences wanted to see Jim Carrey doing the things that had made him such a sensation in the first place.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber were all almost entirely reliant on his forceful charisma, scene-stealing overacting, physical pratfalls, and rubber-faced shenanigans, which, by extension, made his next batch of projects very easy to package, market, and sell to a crowd.
Batman Forever roped him in at the peak of his newfound popularity to squeeze him into a green leotard and have him repurpose his usual shtick, while sequel Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls followed suit. He was an easy star to promote because all any trailer or promo spot needed to do was lean into his signatures.
However, he wasn’t going to let himself be stuffed into that box forever, even if the people above his pay grade had different ideas. Coming off the back of the hot streak that encompassed all of those aforementioned films, Carrey sought to shake up his persona by taking things in a much darker route.
Ben Stiller’s black comedy The Cable Guy made headlines before a single frame had even been shot after Carrey negotiated a record-breaking $20million salary to play the lead role, which was a risky investment considering it was a more sinister, unsettling, and altogether chilling performance that wasn’t anywhere near as mainstream as his biggest hits.
Not that the studio cared, though, after it was decided The Cable Guy would be passed off as yet another standard Carrey vehicle, which left a lot of people disappointed when they parted with their hard-earned cash, took their seats in the cinema, and discovered it was anything but.
Learning his lesson the hard way, Carrey issued what came across as a thinly veiled apology in an interview with Roger Ebert. “We didn’t want to mislead the audience, I believe that The Cable Guy kind of misled the audience, the marketing most of all,” he confessed. “The audience thought they were going to get Ace Ventura, and it was a dark-edged comedy.”
Even though he gave the most underrated and unhinged turn of his career in the movie, and it earned over $100million at the global box office, The Cable Guy was written off as a bit of a dud. The response from critics was lukewarm, and the same can be said of audiences, which might have something to do with the external factors outside of his control that Carrey mentioned.
Time has at least been kind to the underrated gem, with the subversive tale of obsession and parasocial bonding gaining more appreciation once people were clued into what they were actually getting.
