A Three-Decade-Old Jim Carrey Movie Is Blowing Up Netflix's Top Charts

When Jim Carrey made the leap from being a cast member of the Fox sketch comedy hit "In Living Color" to movie star, the funnyman had more than his share of doubters. He starred in three films during 1994, and the first out of the gate, "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," received a number of remarkably harsh pans. Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave the film an F grade, while Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "The most obnoxious case of masculine swagger since Andrew Dice Clay, with just a tad of Paul Lynde thrown in for spice, Jim Carrey defies you not to bolt for the exit while playing the title hero in this 1994 comic mystery." Moviegoers, however, tuned out the critics and turned Carrey's first "Ace Ventura" adventure into a box office smash that grossed $107 million at the box office against a $12 million budget. In a few years, Carrey would personally be pulling down $20 million per picture himself.

Before he hit that dizzying peak, though, he had to prove his films consistently grossed $100 million. So, when it comes to identifying the blockbuster that made him the biggest comedy star on the planet, I always point to "The Mask." Based on the horror-comedy comic book created by John Arcudi and Doug Mahnki, and released in July 1994 during a summer movie season dominated by "The Lion King" and "Forrest Gump," this visual effects-laden crowdpleaser cast Carrey as a sweet-natured bank teller who gets transformed into a green-faced agent of chaos when he dons an ancient mask. It's a livewire superhero flick that confirmed Carrey was, if nothing else, the heir of Jerry Lewis. It grossed $352 million in theaters worldwide and is once again enchanting viewers as, currently, the sixth most popular movie on Netflix.

But why is "The Mask" suddenly all the rage 31 years later?

Sometimes, a movie or show on Netflix will rocket into the site's Top 10 because it stars someone riding high off a current box office or ratings smash. Alternatively, this popularity is occasionally due to the work dealing with a hot topic dominating current events. And sometimes, this media is just at the top of the page all of the time, thus inviting fans to revisit an old favorite or young viewers to see why it was once a pop cultural phenomenon.

I have no idea how "The Mask" plays for young folks nowadays. However, I imagine they'll at least get a kick out of Carrey's antics, Cameron Diaz's star-making turn as a glamorous showgirl, and the scene where Carrey's Jack Russell Terrier is forced to put on the mask (which does not go well for the dog's human tormentor).

"The Mask" felt like it would be Jim Carrey's high-water mark for 1994, but his third release of the year, "Dumb and Dumber," actually outgrossed it domestically. The film also received kinda-sorta positive reviews from Gleiberman and Rosenbaum, suggesting that Carrey's career was primed to explode. It could be that his early clowning has also cost him several well-deserved Academy Award nominations (he was inexplicably passed over for his brilliant work in "The Truman Show," "Man on the Moon," and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), but Carrey's got plenty of time left to get his.