Film / Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls is a live-action film released in 1995, serving as sequel to Ace Ventura (released the preceding year). Jim Carrey reprises his role to interpret the eponymous eccentric pet detective.

After his adventure in the first movie, he's become pretty well known as a pet detective. The second movie's story begins when Ace Ventura fails to save a raccoon in the Himalayas, as the animal falls down a cliff and dies. Devastated by this turn of events, he joins a Tibetan monastery to restore his battered mind. During his tenure there, Ace is hired to recover a sacred bat stolen from two African tribes before war erupts between them, in the fictional country of Nibia.

The movie retains the comedy and quirky tone of its predecessor, but the raunchy humor is toned down. Notably, while Carrey enjoyed himself in the original, he allegedly disliked the sequel so much that he vowed to never do a sequel again, a vow he kept for twenty years until he made Dumb and Dumber To in 2014.

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The movie provides examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: As Ace is being severely beaten by his Wachootoo opponent, all the members of the tribe begin laughing hysterically at just how badly he is being humiliated. After awhile, Ouda begins joining in and is still laughing as he translates to Ace that the Wachootoo are sparing his life because they found his defeat so entertaining.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: When Ace decides to leave the Buddhist monastery, the monks are so overjoyed that he is finally leaving that they throw a huge celebration; complete with bottles of champagne, throwing rolls of toilet paper everywhere, and running around in their underwear.
• Ascended Extra: Spike the capuchin monkey. In the first movie, he’s just one of Ace’s many pets he keeps in his apartment. By the sequel however he has become his official sidekick, staying by his side the whole movie.
• Ass Shove: A variation. When Ace is trapped in an overheating mechanical rhinoceros, he has to escape by pushing out through the "back door"...only to be spotted by tourists on safari who think the rhino is giving birth.
• Ax-Crazy: Played for Laughs with Ace and the Wachootoo tribe.
• Bad Vibrations: Done subtly (at first). As the villain is indulging in a low-key Evil Gloating with a slight What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, everyone falls silent as they feel the house start to vibrate. At first, it's quiet, as if they could possibly be imagining the sound. But it gets louder, and louder, until a horde of animals bursts through the wall, followed by Ace on an ostrich in a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Bat Out of Hell: Bats are the only animals that Ace hates.
  • "DIE, DEVIL BIRD!!!
  • "TAKE THAT, YOU WINGED SPAWN OF SATAAAN!!!"
• Battle-Interrupting Shout: At the end, Ace prevents a war between the two neighboring African tribes by running between the armies with their sacred bat in his hands, shouting its name (which according to the tribes' traditions, requires all who hear it to kneel).
  "SHI-KA-KAAAAAA!"
• Berserk Button:
  • A subversion. In a fight with a crazed Wachootoo tribesman, the tribesman grabs Ace and rearranges his hair into horns, mocking Ace's reputation as the "White Devil." Ace gets up and says that this has gone far enough, "Nobody... messes... with the 'DO!"... and then proceeds to get further pummeled by the tribesman.
  • Harming animals is, naturally, a big one for Ace... unless they're bats.
• Big "NO!": Ace lets one out in the beginning, which is a parody of the opening scene in Cliffhanger when the raccoon he tries to save falls to its death.
• Bits of Me Keep Passing Out: As Ace is being pelted with poisoned darts:
  Ace: (arms going limp, speech slurred) Startin' to get numb...
• Black Comedy Rape: The main bad guy, after his plans to bring the Wachati and Wachootoo tribes into war with each other are brought crashing down around his ears, tries to escape their wrath, but is cornered by a silverback gorilla with... amorous intentions. Cue "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."
• Blow Gun: Ace is shot with dozens of little darts (with hilarious effects) before he passes out.
• Brick Joke:
  Fulton: I believe they're saying that she's not a virgin.
  Ace: ...*Hushed* They can tell that?
• Buffy Speak: "I shall slip amongst them like a transparent...thing."
• Bulungi: The fictional country of Nibia. Oddly enough, the British consulate oversees the local province where the action takes place.
• Call-Back: When Ace first visits the Wachati village, he comes across a man standing one-legged on a tall pillar. He shakes the pillar but the man doesn't fall off ("He's good."). Later, when Ace meets the Wachati Princess, the two spit paper wads together, and it's revealed that they're spitting them at the man on the pillar.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: After seeing the Wachati Princess perform a seductive dance, Ace retreats to his tent. When Fulton goes after him, he finds Ace "practicing his mantra".
• Celebrity Paradox: Ace references The Shawshank Redemption at one point, in which Bob Gunton played Warden Norton; in this film, Gunton plays Burton Quinn.
• Chased by Angry Natives:
  • After Ace stops the battle just before it begins, Cadby tries to sneak away while everyone is kneeling. Unfortunately for him, Ouda spots him and alerts the others.
    Ouda: Equinsu Ocha! Equinsu Ocha!^*White devil! White devil!
    (Tiny Warrior shouts a Battle Cry and everyone gives chase)
  • At the end. Ace deflowered the bride-to-be of the Wachootoo Tiny Warrior that already mopped the floor with him earlier. Ace managed to skate out of being killed by the Wachootoo and was on friendly terms with both them and the Wachati. Then the Tiny Warrior notices... cue everyone chasing Ace in murderous anger.
• Chased Off into the Sunset: The film ends with Ace being chased through the jungle by the native tribes, after they discover The Chief's Daughter is no longer a virgin.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Ace's initial Sherlock Scan of Cadby alerts him to an abrasion on his palm and a white stain on his shoe, which he uses to deduce that Cadby slipped on some shoddy masonry work. This later clues him in to the fact that the white substance Cadby slipped on was in fact guano, which along with its substantial monetary value made him the true culprit.
  • During the start of his investigation, Ace plays drums with several mushroom heads growing on a tree... the red, fungus-bearing acala.
• Chekhov's Skill: Early on, Ace makes some obnoxious animal calls to Fulton on the plane. This could initially be seen as Ace being silly, but later in the film, Ace uses these animal calls to lure two poachers away from their hut so he can retrieve the white bat.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The unexplained disappearance of Melissa Robinson between films. Ace is in self-exile in Tibet and then goes straight to Africa. One would simply assume none of the former cast decided to shell out the cash to leave the country just to join in on the antics.
• The Chief's Daughter: The leading lady, who Ace finds very attractive.
• Clever Crows: When Ace first meets Quinn, he prefers to greet Quinn's pet raven Tinky, rather than Quinn himself, and Ace identifies Tinky as a Common raven with the scientific name Corvus Corax. The smartest of all birds:
  Ace: (When he meets Quinn's pet raven Tinky) Pleasure, Tinky. Corvus Corax. Common raven. Smartest of all birds... Rare in these parts.
• Contrived Coincidence: Ace is looking for a ride to chase after Cadby, who's escaping into the jungle. The only car in the parking lot with keys oh-so-conveniently left in the ignition is a big honking monster truck with tires half the size of the other guy's jeep. Possibly it could be the Australian poachers' ride, though we never see them use the truck.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Ace's methods of interrogating suspects include rubbing a ceramic plate with a knife and a fork really fast, then poking at his own eye. The eye thing works on the guy he's trying it on. "(retches) Oh God, no! My brother used to do that to me!"
• Crazy Cultural Comparison: Features spitting in another's face as a form of showing great respect. Ace, naturally, ramps it up to eleven.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Ace gets one from the hands of the Wachootoo's best warrior.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: "If curse of Shikaka not lifted by tomorrow sun at top of sky, Wachootoo kill all Wachati, and smash your head on a rock."
• Denser and Wackier: The first film is almost a serious detective story with an incredibly strange detective at the helm. The sequel's tone is a lot sillier, with Ace joining a monastery of monks, piloting a mechanical rhino, and wrestling a crocodile. Ace's eccentric behaviour also lost all restraint.
• Detective Patsy: Ace is hired by Vincent Cadby to find a white bat which is sacred to the Wachiti tribe, as the theft of the animal could potentially lead to war between the Wachiti and the Wachootoo. Ace ultimately discovers that Cadby is the one who stole the bat to manipulate the two tribes into destroying each other, allowing him to claim the bat guano in their bat caves and sell it for valuable fertilizer. As there would have been an investigation after the war, Cadby hired Ace to make it look like he had done everything he could to prevent the war by trying to help find the bat.
• Didn't Think This Through: The villain decides to turn his small jeep into the jungle to escape Ace - who is driving a monster truck.
  Ace: "He wants to go off-road!"
• Drives Like Crazy: Ace Ventura already drove like crazy in the first film, but outdoes himself this time. In each film, he swerves into parking spots so he can fit "like a glove!" but now he drives straight through a jungle to reach to consulate in Africa. His crazy driving is put to good use when he chases the bad guys in a monster truck.
  Ace: HEY LOSER, WHY DON'T YOU LEARN HOW TO DRIVE, PAL?
• Duel to the Death: Ace vs the Wachootoo warrior is supposed to be this. Subverted, though, when Ace's defeat proves to be so hilarious that the Wachootoo choose to let him live (allowing them to troll him one more time).
• Embarrassing Nickname: The Wachootoo call Ace "Equinsu Ocha", which means "White Devil". He does not take kindly to it.
• "Eureka!" Moment: The movie has "They have GUANO!" for when Ace realizes what the white man could possibly want with the natives and why they would want to start a tribal war.
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear:
  • The climax seems to imply the villain is not so much pursued by the gorilla as pursued by it.
  • Ace himself is pursued by both tribes in the end after it's learned that he was earlier pursued by the Wachati princess and gave in to her advances.
• Face–Heel Turn: Subverted by Fulton Greenwald. The only reason he didn't hit the lights for Ace is because he was confused by Ace's Unnecessary Combat Rolling; he gets it together later and knocks out Cadby before the villain can shoot Ace. Although this probably had more to do with the giant windows and it being the middle of the day.
• Fanservice Extra: The Wachati Princess in When Nature Calls. When she's intially shown at a Wachati feast for Ace's welcoming, her first act is to perform the Virgin's Dance of Seduction with Ace as her target of affection; once the feast dies down, she approaches him to fully seduce him.
• Flanderization: For all Ace's wackiness in the first film, the sequel dialled it up tenfold. While in Pet Detective he is shown having a few brief moments of at least acting like a normal person, When Nature Calls has him all-out at all times.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Ace seems to have been this for the monks as, when he leaves the temple, they throw a huge raucous party to celebrate.
• Getting Hot in Here: Things got a bit hot for Ace whilst spying on someone from within a tank disguised as a rhino. After stripping bare, he finds that the tank door is jammed, so he crawls out through the rhinobot's vagina, meaning that a safari-going family got to witness a rhino giving birth to a fully-grown, naked human.
• Give Me a Sword: Ace gets a spear thrown into his leg while fighting a tribal native. He shouts for his sidekick to throw him a spear, which he does... stabbing him in the other leg.
• GPS Evidence: Ace gets shot by multiple darts and suspects the darts are being shot by the Wachootoo tribe. After the scene with the tribe, he gets shot again and finds out the Wachootoo dart didn't match the original darts. Ace discovers the original dart was carved from a "red, fungus-bearing acala" which is grown only in one area in the jungle where the bat-nappers are hiding.
• High-Class Glass: The "Monopoly Guy."
• Hollywood Natives: The Wachoochoo and Wachatis tribes. While the Wachatis are healthy and clean, the Wachoochoo have chalk-white face and body paint, fur loincloths, and bad hygiene.
• Improv Fu: Ace has a fight with a tribal warrior in this fashion. However, though Ace certainly tries, he gets the crap beaten out of him.
• Incredibly Long Note: When Ace goes off the waterfall, he yells "Spiiiiiiiiiii-" (at his partner monkey Spike) Moments later, when he emerges from the water, he's still screaming: "...iiiiiiiiiiiiiike!"
• Inevitable Waterfall: Ace is also strapped to a wooden raft at the time.
• Instant Sedation: Uses the humorous muscle paralysis angle, of course, but he's still blacking out after a rather short chase. Of course, three darts was too much. So were the half-dozen or so that nailed him in the back right after he "thought he lost them".
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Parodied, as the methods Ace uses are Poke the Poodle levels... though they still work.
• Just Plane Wrong: The opening sequence features Ace climbing some Alpine-looking mountains, dressed in suspenders and shorts often stereotypically portrayed on Swiss alpinists, and there is a helicopter flying around him painted in crimson red with a white cross at each side — the symbol and flag of Switzerland. The aircraft's tail number (license plate)? Canadian registration.
• Karmic Rape: The fate of the main villain.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Subverted. Ace gets his hair styled as devil horns, makes a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner… and then gets the crap beaten out of him.
• Lighter and Softer: Zigzagged. While this film has considerably less offensive swearing, sexual jokes, and vulgarity than the original film, there are also some dark or vulgar jokes that rival or even top it (such as two birth-related jokes, Toilet Humor related to bat poop and the aforementioned Black Comedy Rape of its main villain).
• Martial Pacifist: The Wachati may be peaceful and respectful of life, but they're willing to fight the Wachootoo when their very existence is on the line.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: In When Nature Calls, when the Wachati princess performs a seductive dance, Ace tries to resist her advances, talking about his Vow of Celibacy. Later, his associate catches him masturbating in his tent. His excuse is he was just "practicing my mantra" and will finish his "meditation" in 10 minutes.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Bat kidnapping -> plot to wipe out two indigenous African tribes and seize their land.
  Ace: (to himself) THINK! Someone wants these two tribes to destroy each other! There must be something valuable in this equation.
• Misplaced Wildlife: The Indian elephant is excusable, as they're much more docile and easier to train than African elephants. But not a single animal in Quinn's warehouse was African. There were a Bengal tiger (Asian), a jaguar, macaws and a toucan (all South American). Quinn also wasn't surprised to see Spike, a South American black-capped capuchin, implying he has a few of those around as well. He most likely illegally smuggled the animals away from their natural habitat to put on his safari tour. Ace, when he first meets Quinn, points out that his pet raven Tinky isn't even from Africa. Then there is the skunk that Ace somehow gets his hands on for the final battle, how he found a American species in the jungle is anyone's guess.
• Mistaken for Gay: Happens to Ouda at one point when Ace talks to him:
  Ace: I represent the Princess.
  Ouda: "I am a Princess."
  (The Wachootoo tribe murmur in confusion. One of the tribesmen rises up and smiles.)
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Ace gets pretty angry when a fight between him and a Wachootoo tribesman sees Ace's hair getting changed into horns. Ace takes exception to that, with the music swelling and Ace getting fired up. Cue a Gilligan Cut, and Ace is getting his butt kicked even worse.
• Nice Guy: Fulton Greenwall has a large amount of patience for Ace's antics. Even when he's the butt of them.
• No Need for Names: Apparently, at the monastery, no one wears "labels". However, once you start inquiring about "the man who talks with his rear" they know who you're talking about right away.
• Nobody Touches the Hair: "NOBODY. MESSES. WITH THE 'DO!!"
• Not So Above It All: When Ace is screwing around with juvenile shadow puppetry during the Mission Briefing, Fulton is visibly laughing.
• Not So Stoic: The monks. When introduced, they're all meditating and peaceful. When they learn that Ace is leaving, they start partying with loud music, wine, throwing toilet paper, and one guy dancing in his underwear.
  Ace: I never seen them act like that before. Denial can be an ugly thing.
• Oh, Crap!: Ace's reaction when he goes to Cadby to confront him over setting the two native tribes against each other over bat guano. Not only does Ace realize that the poachers have him pinned inside the room, Cadby explains to everyone in the room that he plans to keep Ace alive to use as a scapegoat for the inevitable inquiry as to why the Wachootoo and Wachati will have killed one another. Ace immediately begins scrambling around while shouting directions to Greenwald, who cannot react because he has no idea what Ace is supposed to be doing.
• Parrot Expo-WHAT?:
  Princess: That was the dart of the Wachootoo shaman!
  Ace: The what-nee what-en?
• Product Placement: An obvious ad of Subway is placed on a highway billboard early in the film. Probably not so much product placement as irony, as literally right before that Ace mentions something about loving being out in the wild, i.e. without things like Subway. A Subway commercial at the time uses editing to make it look like Ace, after passing the Highway Billboard, takes a sharp turn and speeds up to get to the restaurant.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Ace has several of these:
  • "PLEASE.... don't..... get up."
  • "Must... have... AIR!"
  • "Vhere. Is. Ze bat?"
  • "DO NOT! GO IN THERE. WHOOOO!"
  • "NOBODY! MESSES! WITH THE DO!!!"
• Reflexive Remark of Reverence: The Wachati and the Wachootoo always kneel in respect whenever they hear the word "Shikaka". Ace first makes fun of it by saying a barrage of words in front of the Wachati chief and Ouda that start with an "Sh-" sound like "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Chicago", but later it becomes a Chekhov's Gun that allows Ace to stop the tribal war before it begins, by running between the charging tribes with the bat held high and screaming its name at the top of his lungs.
• Rewind Gag: When doing the summation, Ace rattles off his conclusion towards the accused. He then says "Let me run that back for you", reverses his actions, also speaking like a rewinding tape.
• Rich Bitch: The Statuesque Stunner that Ace has an argument with about fur. She's even listed in the credits as "Pompous Woman".
• Sanity Slippage: In the first movie Ace was quite eccentric but had some "sane" moments. In this movie he's devolved more or less into a Psychopathic Manchild and all his antics are definitely crazier than before.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Ouda is oblivious to Ace's annoyance at his "help".
  • When Ace is afraid to go into the bat-infested cave.
  Ouda: Here, take my torch.
  Ace: Spank you, Helpy Helperton.
  • When Ace has been caught by the Wachootoo.
  Ace: I'm sure Ouda is going for help right now.
  Ouda: Hello, Ace. They've captured me. No sweat.
  Ace: Don't beat yourself up.
• Scary Black Man: The very stoic Hitu.
• Sequel Escalation: In the first film Ace is just an eccentric, Miami-based private detective who gets sucked into a murder plot. Here, the plot is an attempt to massacre two entire tribes to make billions, the culprit is a wealthy and powerful British official, and Ace is now a legendary international detective who has access to robot rhinos.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Takes place in Africa.
• Sexual Karma: The protagonist enjoys a night with The Chief's Daughter, while the unfortunate Big Bad finds love in the bush. With the Extra Points.
• Sherlock Scan: Ace does this when he meets Cadby for the first time.
• Shout-Out:
  • "There's… something on the wing… some… thing!"
  • While driving crazily through the African jungle, he takes the time to sing the title song of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
  • When being repeatedly pushed by a guard after being detained, Ace refers to him as "H.R. Shove-N-Stuf".
• Smelly Skunk: Ace uses one to subdue some bad guys. "Say hello to my STEENKY LEETLE FRIEND!!!"
• Smoking Barrel Blowout: Done with the skunk above.
• Smug Snake: The Big Bad.
• Solid Gold Poop: The motivation for the bad guys to want to get rid of the peaceful tribe is to get their hands on their guano-rich lands, thereby giving them a chance to make a killing on the fertilizer market.
• Standing Between the Enemies: At the climax Ace stops two mounting armies by running between them holding the sacred bat they had been about to fight over.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  Ace: I can feel it like it's right...(gets hit with tranq dart) in my NECK! RUUUUUNNNNN!
• Tap on the Head:
  • Greenwall knocks out Cadby when the latter tries to shoot Ace with an elephant gun.
  • Ace punches a smaller man in the head and knocks him out so he can drap the man across his shoulders as though he were a fur stole. This was intended to teach the mans wife a lesson about wearing fur.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: When Ace is in Quinn's trophy room.
  Ace: This is a lovely room of death...
• Tempting Fate: The two poachers offer to go after the escaped Ace, but the Big Bad dismisses this, saying he cannot do anything as their plan is near to fruition. Cue Ace invading the Lovely Room of Death with live animals.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Ace encounters a couple at the consel's party where the husband is small, skinny man and his wife is a Statuesque Stunner who towers over him.
• Tranquillizer Dart: Halfway into the movie, Ace gets hit by three tranquilizer darts but remains conscious... until he gets darted four more times.
• Trolling Translator: Ace gets his Wachati guide Ouda to translate his words into the Wachootoo language...badly.
  Ace: War Is Hell. The last thing we want is a fight.
  Ouda: "I want a fight, so go to hell!"
  • It's left to the viewers' imagination whether Ouda is actually a bad translator, or if he's working to keep Ace alive with his mistranslations; the Wachootoo don't seem like peace-loving people, and might take fatal offense to Ace's cowardice. Though, given that at one point he has Ace calling himself a princess, Ouda is likely either genuinely bad or a giant Troll.
• Unconventional Vehicle Chase: When Cadby is getting away in his car, Ace looks over several vehicles parked nearby. The only one with a key in the ignition happens to be a monster truck. Watch the ensuing chase here.
• Virgin Vision:
  "She's not a virgin!"
  "They can tell that?"
  (Cue being Chased by Angry Natives)
• War Is Hell: Played word for word when the pet detective says the following words to the native Wachoochoo tribe:
  "War...is hell! The last thing we want...is a fight!"
  • Which Ouda, one of the native Wachatis, translates as "I want to fight you...so go to hell!" Which the Wachoochoo reacts in anger, while Ace assumes they agree with him.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?/Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Ace loves all animals... except bats. Note that he also apparently likes other various non-cute animals. It's just bats that are his personal squick.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: When Ace confronts a woman wearing an animal skin across her shoulders, and she pompously says there's nothing wrong with it and that he should try it sometime, he replies by cold-clocking her slightly-less-obnoxious husband and wearing him over his shoulders like an animal skin, rather than her. This may have been the reason, but it's just as likely that Ace just wanted to demonstrate to her face how hypocritical she was being.
• Wrestler of Beasts: Ace fights off a Nile crocodile that attacks him after he is thrown into the water by poachers trying to kill him.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: While a "Eureka!" Moment, just before Ace returns to his body, you can see this expression on his face as he realizes that the whole situation has arisen because of bat guano.