Ace Ventura 3: Lost in Time (2025)

After nearly three decades, the pet detective who could out-shout a foghorn and out-weird a circus is back — and he’s somehow louder, stranger, and more unpredictable than ever. Ace Ventura 3: Lost in Time doesn’t just revisit Jim Carrey’s most manic creation; it catapults him through a cosmic blender of genres, timelines, and completely unnecessary slow-motion pratfalls.

The setup is gloriously ridiculous, as it should be. When an ancient, reality-bending animal — known in whispered legend as the Chrono-Beast — vanishes without a trace, Ace Ventura is roped into a case that makes his past escapades look like a lost-and-found call. Before he can say “spank you very much,” Ace is sucked into a kaleidoscopic wormhole that hurls him through eras and dimensions with all the subtlety of a marching band falling down an escalator.

The time-jumping premise lets the film embrace an “anything goes” attitude. Prehistoric jungles become playgrounds for slapstick dinosaur encounters — imagine Ace trying to “speak” velociraptor and somehow offending the entire pack. In the next breath, he’s in a neon-drenched, Blade Runner-esque megacity, trading banter with a malfunctioning hologram dog while evading robotic animal control. And then there are the alternate Earths, like one where squirrels run the government (and Ace, naturally, becomes their ambassador).

Carrey slips back into Ventura’s skin like no time has passed, delivering that whiplash blend of elastic facial gymnastics, rapid-fire absurdity, and bizarre animal mimicry that somehow never gets old. But the film wisely doesn’t make him carry the chaos alone. His companions — a sass-loaded talking parrot named Captain Beaky (voiced with deadpan brilliance by Taika Waititi) and a smooth-talking AI called LEX-9 (Dan Stevens, oozing charm) — give Ace plenty of material to bounce off.

The banter between this unlikely trio is pure gold. The parrot is perpetually unimpressed, the AI is baffled by Ace’s sheer illogic, and Ace… well, Ace is just delighted to have an audience. Together, they stumble through history’s most dangerous (and ridiculous) moments, from accidentally kick-starting the Renaissance to photobombing the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Visually, Lost in Time is a candy store of sci-fi spectacle and absurd comedy set-pieces. The special effects are polished enough to sell the scale, but they’re never too self-serious to avoid being the punchline. Dinosaurs slip on banana peels, space battles are interrupted by Ace playing charades with alien pets, and entire timelines teeter on the brink of collapse because he refuses to take anything seriously.

The real genius here is how the movie uses its time-travel conceit to wink at Ace’s own history. Longtime fans will catch nods to When Nature Calls and the original film — from familiar catchphrases sneaking into ancient dialects, to old side characters popping up in the most unexpected eras. Even the ending delivers a meta twist so perfectly absurd, it could only belong in an Ace Ventura movie.

By the finale, with timelines converging and the Chrono-Beast’s true power revealed, Ace faces a choice that could alter reality forever. Naturally, he makes it with the exact mix of idiocy and heart that’s defined him since the ’90s. Carrey closes it out with a full-bodied commitment that reminds you why this character became a comedy icon in the first place.

Ace Ventura 3: Lost in Time is more than a nostalgia trip — it’s a reminder that unhinged, fearless comedy still has a place in big-screen blockbusters. It’s loud, it’s ridiculous, and it’s relentlessly committed to making you laugh until your ribs hurt.