Sequels To Jim Carrey Movies That Don’t Star Jim Carrey

I can’t think of a crazier idea than making a sequel (or prequel) to a movie where the actor in the title role doesn’t return for the next film in the series.  Why would you even make the movie, and who’d want to see a movie like that anyway?  Judging by the grosses, nobody.

Dumb and Dumberer:  When Harry Met Llyod
This piece of crap stars (and I use that term loosely) Derek Richardson, Eric Christian Olsen and Eugene Levy, during his ill advised teen comedy phase.  This piece of crap cost $19 million, but it brought in over $39 million, so it made money for it’s investors, but considering the original cost $17 million and made $247,275,104, it’s easy to see how far the apple fell from the tree.

Son of the Mask
See, I didn’t think the first Mask was very good, and this is going back to when I saw it in the theater when I was twelve or whatever.  This movie also begs the question, who in the hell would want to see a movie starring Jamie Kennedy and Alan Cumming?  Nobody, that’s who.  This flaming pile of excrement rang up a total due of $84 million and earned only $57 million.  The original only cost $23 million and earned $351 million; I guess those animated effects in the first one were much cheaper than the digital effects in the sequel.  You can’t feel bad for anybody who lost money on this one; what were they thinking?

Evan Almighty
Only the most unusual set of circumstances and coincidences brought me to the theater to see Evan Almighty, which wasn’t that bad, actually…  except there was no Jim Carey.  Not a cameo, no nothing.   However, we did get Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, John Goodman, Lauren Graham, Wanda Sykes, John Michael Higgins and Jonah Hill to round out the cast, so not too shabby.  It’s watchable, I’ll say that much for it.  However, this movie cost a fortune – a ton of digital effects…  I don’t know what they were thinking.  The movie costs $200 million to make – did they really think they had a chance in heave or hell to make that back?  Gross revenue checks in at $173,418,781 – swing and a miss.  Meanwhile, Bruce Almighty costed $81 million and earned $484 million.

Ace Ventura Jr.
I can’t find any revenue numbers on this plane laden with rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong because it made it’s debut on Cartoon Network, during which I sat through five random minutes of the film and almost immediately lost my lunch.  Just because a TV show or a movie is made for kids doesn’t mean it has to be the worst thing ever written.  You’d assume that this project was aimed at a theatrical release with the idea being that people who saw the original Ace Venture movies would take their kids to see this movie, but it was such a volcanic eruption of manure that they hid the damn thing on Cartoon Network – and that reminds me, the opening sequence of the first Ace Venture is comprised of Ace stealing a woman’s dog from her ex boyfriend and returning it to the dog’s owner, who, instead of rewarding him with a cash payment, pleasures him…  to hilarious results, I guess.

So what did we learn here?  If you’re making a sequel to a Jim Carey movie, you should probably try to your damndest to retain Jim Carey to star in the movie.  If you can’t, it seems like it would be a HUGE MISTAKE to double the budget of the original movie.  You end up with a movie that has no star power and a poorly written script that just rehashes a bunch of crap the audience has already seen and probably didn’t think was that great in the first place.

You know, like when Jim Carey made Yes Man, which was an awful lot like Liar, Liar.