The Mask (1994)

The year was 1994. Jim Carrey, fresh off his work from the hit 90’s comedy sketch show “In Living Color”, scored with the box-office hit movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective of that January. Five months later, He returned to the big screen in yet another comedy hit in that of THE MASK. In this film, Carrey plays Stanley Ipkiss, a luckless nice guy who works at a bank and his best friend is a Jack Russell Terrier name Milo, who finds a mysterious wooden mask which transforms him into a wacky, green faced cartoonish superhero. Based on the comic books by Dark Horse Comics, it was very dark and frightening and it was originally supposed to be a horror movie with some sense of humor, but the film’s director Chuck Russell (Eraser, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Warriors) decided it’ll would be a lot better as an explosive comedy. Thank God he was right. By surprise to me was that Russell wanted Carrey for the main protagonist cause he was a big fan of him on In Living Color, and I think this is one of the best performances of his I’ve ever seen. After this movie came out, it went on to a Saturday morning cartoon spinoff, which I happened to watch and come out with action figures, which also I owned some of them. Carrey became an international movie star with this film and later on with Dumb & Dumber and it would later make him go on to do Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Batman Forever, and so on and so forth. I recognized a lot of the supporting actors in this movie: Peter Riegert (Animal House), Peter Greene (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory), Amy Yasbeck (Robin Hood: Men in Tights), Reginald E. Cathey (S.W.A.T.), the late Denis Forest (Cliffhanger), the late comic Richard Jeni, and of course, Ben Stein (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). For Riegert’s performance as the slightly cynical Lt. Mitch Kellaway, I thought he was a complete jerk. But Greene’s performance as the main antagonist Dorian Tyrell, I thought he was very good. And last but not least, Cameron Diaz in her feature film debut as the beautiful Tina Carlyle was great. There were a lot of great scenes like Carrey’s first transformation, which at first thought it was kind of scary when I first saw it at age six but later got over it, the balloon animal-carnival scene, and the Cuban Pete musical sequence. With the comedy of Jim Carrey and the visual effects from ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) thrown together, it makes THE MASK into one of the greatest comedies of 90’s and all time. SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSMOKIN'!