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Kooshmeister
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
USA
104 Posts |
 Posted - 12/17/2005 : 08:55:21 AM
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Here is my review for the Christmas season: "Ace Ventura: The Reindeer Hunter." It was the Christmas episode of the animated Ace Ventura series, which I know almost nothing about, having seen only two episodes (including this one). I'm not big on pre-recap intros, so let's just skip to the nitty-gritty, shall we?
The Characters:
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Ace Ventura - The eponymous pet detective. He's just as annoying in animated form as he is in the live-action films.
Santa Claus - Does he need an introduction? Santa comes to see Ace because of a problem about some missing reindeer.
Spike - Ace's obnoxiously cute pet monkey.
Atrocia Odora - Evil makeup mogul who owns Odora Industries.
Mr. Shickadance - Ace's creepy, animal-hating landlord.
Emilio and Aguado - A couple of police officers.
Grack, Gilbert and Huge Guy - Odora's bumbling henchmen.
The Story:
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It's Christmas in Miami. Because it doesn't snow, Ace concocts a scheme to make it snow inside his apartment, much to the consternation of his landlord Mr. Shickadance. Mr. Shickadance is complaining that Ace's scheme is causing him to freeze the adjoining apartments, including his own (Ace is brave to have all those animals and live right next door to the meanest old man in Miami).
there's mistletoe over the door, but rather than abide by tradition and give Shickadance a big wet smooch, he discards it as quickly as possible. He then says he refuses to shut off his snow machine until Shickadance actually posts something up saying "No snow!" as an official rule. Naturally, Shickadance heads off to do just that, anything to make Ace behave.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, Santa Claus is a-makin' his rounds, complaining about the Florida heat in his snowsuit (why does this remind me of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny?). he stops off at some random house and, after squeezing down the chimney, he does his thing. But, up on the roof a shadowy figure appears and closes in on the poor reindeer. When Santa returns, they're all gone.
Going to a local bar, Santa checks the phone book and finds Ace's number, and gives him a call. Needless to say, Ace is a little skeptical at first. To make sure he's the real Santa, he asks him what he gave him last Christmas. Santa says it was a hair styler. "Your highness, king of the elves, I'm on my way!" gushes Ace.
He's of course accompanied by his faithful pet monkey, Spike, and as he drives off (in the car that still has a smashed windshield from the events of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), he sideswipes the ladder that Mr. Shickadance is on, in the process of putting a "No Snow" sign up. With the ladder knocked out from under him, Shickdadance grabs hold of the sign and hangs on for dear life, yelling "Ventura!"
Meeting with Santa, Ace gets the facts, but after investigating the rooftop where the reindeer disappeared, he is baffled when he finds not a single clue. Ace has a theory though: "Got anyone in Miami who hates you guts?" he asks Santa. Before Santa can reply, Ace switches gears and asks to see his list of naughty people, reasoning that somebody on the list wants revenge on Santa. Santa complies, giving Ace the mile-long list of bad people. Ace admits he's glad he just has to look in Miami.
So, he gives Santa the keys to his apartment, telling him to "go chill," while he goes around and questions those on the naughty list living in Miami. There's only a certain number of these people in the city, and, as it turns out, none of them have the reindeer. This occurs in a somewhat lengthy sequence I'm too lazy to describe, but I will say those among the naughty people include a clown, a redneck, and a French thief.
Ace, worn out, is just about to give up hope, when he notices some suspicious activity on a nearby roof. Three men are loading sacks of something onto a helicopter. One is a green-skinned zombie-like guy (!) with sweatstains under his arms (!!), the second is a really huge muscular guy, and the third is a short scientist-like guy with glasses and a white lab coat. Ace confronts them: "If those are sacks full of toys for the orphanage, I'm a monkey's uncle!" Panicking, the guys get into the chopper and take off.
The scientist-like guy can't make it in time, so the muscular man grabs him by the arm and pulls him along. Ace, in turn, leaps off the roof and grabs onto the guy's lab coat. "He's got me! The monkey's uncle's got me!" the guy cries. So then the muscular man grabs him by the front of his shirt, allowing him to shrug off his coat, and Ace with it. Ace has a Wile E. Coyote moment where he hangs in midair, then plummets.
He crashes onto a huge Christmas tree atop a department store, causing the star to fall off and crash into a police car that, as it turns out, contains two of his cop friends. Well, one cop friend, Emilio, and one fat jerk, with the rather oboxious-sounding name of Aguado. Coming down, Ace has a pow-wow with them. Aguado, who never misses a chance to mock Ace's chosen profession, says, "Did somebody steal Santa's reindeer?" "Three soembodys," Ace corrects him, and shows them the lab coat. Emilio tells Ace he's going nuts, and that they have more important things to do, like get over to a fundraising ball at someplace called Odora Industries.
Ace promptly grabs the lab coat back and sends them on their way (they drive off without bothering the take the giant star off the top of their car). Suddenly, he notices something odd, and sniffs the jacket. "Lady's perfume - on a thug?" Determined to get to the bottom of this, Ace runs inside the department store and raids their perfume section, sniffing all the fragarences hoping to find the one matching the lab coat. But, alas, he can't find any that match it, and passes out from inhaling too much perfume and has to be given oxygen by paramedics. That's when he notices a sign advertising a perfume he didn't see in the store - Odora Number 5.
The checkout lady tells him that's their most popular brand, manufactured by Odora Industries, and they've been sold out for quite a while. But when she mentions that's the brand she wears, Ace grabs her and sniffs her, and it's a perfect match for the lab coat. "Comparison shoppers say....aaaaaallrighty, then!" he declares triumphantly.
So, it's off to Odora Industries for Ace and Spike the monkey. The place is a combination factory office building, with the Miami police fundraising event being held in the office portion of course. So, Ace sneaks around the back. Sure enough, the same helicopter is parked on the rooftop landing pad. Ace pauses a moment to screw around with its rotor blades before actually going inside. He finds himself in a huge, high-tech lab-type place, with giant vats and chemicals galore, and something with a big white sheet over it that says "No peeking."
Naturally, he reasons this must be the reindeer. "Okay, boys, Ace is here for you!" he declares as he yanks off the sheet, then screams as a giant, albino alligator tries to bite his face off. It's at this point that the three guys from earlier come in, and since they aren't given much of a proper introduction namewise, Grack is the green zombie-like guy and Gilbert is the scientist. The name of the muscular guy is never given, though. They're amazed to discover that Ace survived the fall.
"Yes, I'm like a cat, I have nine lives" he says, and is then flattened when the muscular guy jumps him and sits on him. He instructs Grack to go get "the boss." Grack dons a Santa suit (!) and ventures into the adjoining building where the police ball is being held. The host of the evening is Atrocia Odora, the owner of the company and a dead ringer for Cruella De Ville, one of those really old women who has had one facelift too many. Trying too look inconspicious, Grack does his best Santa impersonation: "Yo, ho, ho!" He'll do this for the rest of the adventure, no matter how many times people correct him and tell him he's supposed to be playing Santa, not a pirate.
Miss Odora accompanies him back into the factory/lab, where she fidns Ace trying to beat up the muscular guy. The man just stands there looking bored as Ace karate-chops him and hits him, while Spike has perched atop Gilbert's head and is resisting all attempts to get him off.
Odora confronts Ace, and can smell all the differant perfumes he tried, and scolds him for mixing differant brands, before telling her goons to kill him. "Wait!" cries Ace. "Aren't you gonna tell me your evil plan? I mean, I know your type! You couldn't sleep at night without telling me your scheme!" She shrugs and walks out. But then she busts back in, saying "I can't stand it! I have to spill it!" Just to be annoying, Ace plugs his ears and starts to hum We Wish You A Merry Christmas as loudly as possible when Odora tries to talk.
Grack and the big guy unplug his ears, but Spike jumps up and covers Ace's ears for him, so Gilbert grabs Spike off of him, and now Ace has no choice but to listen, which was his whole intention all along. I guess. This bit doesn't really make any sense.
Odora's evil plot is this: she runs a cosmetics company, obviously, and she's become obsessed with trying to look young, so she noticed how Santa's reindeer never seem to age. She figures the secret must lie in their DNA, and has Gilbert unveil the reindeer, strapped into this weird-looking machine that makes their butts stick up, with huge syringes aimed down at them. Why she wants to extract the stuff from their butts is beyond me, but there ya go.
She also mentions she intends to do something similar to the alligator, and in both cases, the procedure will be fatal to the animals. Ace is less than thrilled. Now, Odora really has to dispose of Ace, so she reveals that part of the process of creating Odora Number 5 involves heating the perfume inside of a giant vat. She turns up the temperature, and instructs her men to toss him into it to be boiled to death once it's hot enough. "That'll get rid of my unsightly nasal warts, all right," Ace gushes.
Odora departs, returning to the ball before anyone notices she's missing, and Ace yells for Spike to go get help. Spike races off, trailing Odora, but becomes distracted by the desert cart at the banquet and starts stuffing his face with Jell-O and cookies.
By now, the vat is hot enough to kill anyone who falls into it. "Time to throw you in the bubbly-wubbly," the muscular guy says as he and Gilbert drag Aces towards it, who is trying to grab ahold of anything, including the door on the alligator's cage, which apparently has no lock on it, and swings open. The gator naturally turns on the thugs first, and chases them around until they climb up onto the catwalks to safety. Then, he decides to menace Ace, and chases him all over before Ace finally escapes through the door leading into the ballroom. Ace also repeats a famous line from the first movie - "Do not... go in there!"
He notices that over half the Miami police force is in attendance, and tries to get them to come with him back into the lab, but everyone laughs when he says that Santa's reindeer are in danger.
Speaking of Santa, he's watching TV back in Ace's apartment (Mr. Shickadance is still hanging from the No Snow sign outside), and gets to the live news coverage of the policeman's ball. Seeing Ace is apparently in trouble, he realizes he has to go help.
Back at the ball, Ace realizes he can't get the police to come back with him like that (even though at one point he offers to "dance with his shirt off" if they will), so he starts causing trouble, then runs for the lab, knowing the police will chase him. But, alas, Odora announces it's time for dessert - including donuts. The cops stampede for the dessert cart. Oblivious, Ace runs back into the lab and announces "Arrest these men!" That's when he notices he's alone, and that Gilbert and the big guy have gotten the alligator back into his cage. Suddenly, Grack appears, and twists a metal bar into a pretzel and points at it, apparently as a demonstration of what he's going to do to Ace.
Gilbert throws the switch, announcing, "A Merry Christmas to all and to Santa's reindeer, a goodnight!" as those huge needles descend toward the reindeer's butts.
Grack has Ace pinned and is, yes, twisting him into a pretzel, declaring happily "Yo, ho, ho!" Suddenly a voice comes out of nowhere - "That's ho, ho, ho!" With a Tarzan yell version of "Ho, ho, ho!" ("Hooooooooooo, ho, hooooooooooooo!"), Santa swings down on a rope and kicks Grack off of Ace. "Better not pout, boys, 'cause Santa Claus is back in town!" Ace says. Santa suddenly starts doing ninja moves, and belts the muscular guy.
Untwisting himself, Ace does some ninja moves of his own on Gilbert. Well, kinda. He does all sorts of fancy moves, then just grabs the guy's glasses off his face, impairing Gilbert's ability to see, and just tosses his ass aside. He turns off the Butt-Sticking Machine of Doom and frees the reindeer.
Grack meanwhile grabs a spare giant syringe and tries to run Ace through with it, but Ace hops onto one of the reindeer's back and is lifted to safety. Grack then turns his attention to Santa, but Ace returns the earlier favor by swooping down and knocking the syringe out of Grack's hands. The huge needle smashes into the control panel for the heat regulator of the Odora Number 5 vat, and it starts to overload. "Yaaaah! It's gonna bloooo-oooo-oooow!" screams the muscular man as he, Grack and Gilbert run out.
They climb into the helicopter and take off, but because Ace had monkeyed with it earlier, the rotor blades pop off. The 'copter flies down and crashes right into the No Snow sign. Mr. Shickadance ends up pinned beneath it, but survives ("Yo, ho, ho!" says Grack. "That's ho, ho, ho!" grumbles Shickadance).
Santa thanks Ace and flies off with his reindeer, but then Ace remembers that the place is gonna blow up. Too much heat has caused the would-be perfume to turn into white goo, and when the vat explodes, a flood of this stuff washes everything in the lab into the ballroom, including Ace. Everything gets sticky, and Aguado is chased by the alligator, as Ace announces that it's illegal to have an endangered animal, which means Odora's going to jail.
And that's pretty much the end. And no, we never do learn what Odora's henchmen were doing with thos mysterious sacks on the roof when Ace first encounters them. |
Edited by - Kooshmeister on 12/17/2005 08:57:37 AM
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Christmas-y Review: Ace Ventura!
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