16 Best Jim Carrey Movies Ranked

Surprise hit "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" transformed Jim Carrey from a bit player to a titan of cinematic comedy. However, it wasn't exactly cherished by critics upon its release. Moreover, some of us who found our slides thoroughly split by Ace's antics at the time have revisited the film since and discovered we no longer consider a guy talking with his butt to be the funniest thing that has ever happened.

After "Ace" rocketed Carrey to international fame, he made a handful of films like "Man on the Moon," which prove he has more in him than gross-out slapstick. That was a smart move: "Ace Ventura" might have cracked audiences up and rocketed him to international fame, but he probably wouldn't enjoy the level of prominence he's attained had he only ever been the "Ace Ventura" guy. Still, Carrey returned to the character once more in 1995's "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls," and might be on the cusp of making a third "Ace" film.

To this very day, folks argue constantly and passionately about whether "The Cable Guy" is any good. As a former television technician inexplicably obsessed with a bland protagonist played by Matthew Broderick, Carrey was certainly not a contender at the '96 Oscars. But his performance as Chip Douglas made audiences just uncomfortable enough to convince them of Carrey's potential beyond slapstick. Ultimately, "The Cable Guy" became most significant as evidence of this claim. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast and crew is a virtual who's-who of the last quarter century of comedy, including producer Judd Apatow, roughly 10 years before his name basically became its own genre.

"The Cable Guy" is either a cutting exploration of pop culture oversaturation, stunted social development, and emotional violence, or it's a kind-of-bad '90s comedy that's only important because of who's involved. Where it lands is ultimately up to you.

In this Robert Zemeckis-helmed iteration of "A Christmas Carol," Jim Carrey plays Ebenezer Scrooge, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. But that's not the most remarkable aspect of this movie. The really freaky thing is how it managed to rake in more than $300 million, yet still be considered a profound financial disappointment, due to its swollen production and marketing budget. Multiple once-powerful studio executives actually lost their jobs in the wake of the film's lackluster profit.

"A Christmas Carol" scored middling reviews. But while the critics were preoccupied with the film's off-putting animation, they weren't necessarily hostile to this spin on the immortal Charles Dickens parable and Carrey's multifaceted performance within it. Carrey obviously made a ton of money regardless, but from a purely creative standpoint, It must be a drag to know you did a good job and still have the world bemoan your film as a failure.

"Man On The Moon" seems like it should've been a bigger deal. After all, it had R.E.M. providing one of their better late-career singles in "The Great Beyond" for the soundtrack, director Milos Forman of "Amadeus" (1984) and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) fame at the wheel, Jim Carrey's self-erasing devotion to the gig, and the legacy of mythic outsider comic Andy Kaufman in its proverbial bag of tricks. There are certainly plenty of possible reasons why it got lost in the shuffle. It came out during one of the greatest years for movies in the history of cinema, for one thing. And hey, maybe Universal overestimated the mainstream audience's interest in Kaufman. Perhaps Carrey's appeal was already suffering from overexposure by the end of the '90s. 

Nevertheless, this is one of the relatively few post-stardom Carrey projects that actually lost money. Despite Carrey's picture-perfect portrayal of Kaufman, which the critics uniformly lauded (if not the movie as a whole), "Man On The Moon" signifies the end of the era in which everything Jim Carrey touched turned into money.

"Earth Girls Are Easy" positively screams "This movie takes place in the 1980s!" at the top of its lungs. But, since it aired on Comedy Central basically constantly throughout the first half of the 1990s, a large fraction of the movie-consuming hoards closely associate it with '90s cable TV. So, does that mean "Earth Girls Are Easy" is retroactively a '90s movie? Nah, but it nevertheless became a beloved cult item after sinking like a bag of hammers in the ocean during its 1988 journey through cineplexes. 

Handsome space aliens played by Carrey, Jeff Goldblum, and Damon Wayans visit Geena Davis' romantically and sexually frustrated protagonist. Her frustrations subside soon thereafter. It's kinda like "Weird Science," except with the gender roles reversed and all characters involved comfortably above the age of consent. It earned decent reviews, and enjoyed much renewed public interest after Carrey's star status went galactic. However, even without his involvement, it would still be remembered as the film Goldblum and Davis made together right before they got divorced.

As is the case with "A Christmas Carol," Jim Carrey plays multiple parts in the aggressively whimsical "Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events." Most notably, he portrays the nefarious Count Olaf, a grumpy old man who doesn't lend himself to the elastic physicality often associated with Carrey's oeuvre. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" also hit theaters in 2004, which means Carrey released two films in the same year showcasing his versatility. 

As far as critical reception goes, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" fared well: It struck critics as an attempt to imitate Tim Burton that ended up being better than many actual Tim Burton projects. The film's absolutely star-studded cast is a major part of this success: Jude Law, Meryl Streep, Timothy Spall, and Jennifer Coolidge appear in this film alongside Carrey. "A Series of Unfortunate Events" also introduced Australian actor Emily Browning to American audiences, who now likely know her better as Laura Moon on "American Gods."

Y'know what people love? Movies about dads who are excessively focused on their careers and don't pay enough attention to their children. In each of these movies, some magical force injects itself into the equation, putting the negligent dad in a highly improbable situation that forces him to reconsider his productivity-centered worldview. At the end of the movie, the dad promises to spend more time with his kids. "Liar Liar" is one of these movies, and much like its brethren ("Click," "Elf," "The Family Man"), it has brought harmless escapist enjoyment to a whole lot of nice folks.  

Perhaps most pertinently, "Liar Liar" marks Jim Carrey's second collaboration with director Tom Shadyac, who had previously guided the production of "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." Carrey and Shadyac would join forces once again on 2003's "Bruce Almighty," a film that does not score highly enough on Rotten Tomatoes to warrant inclusion in this list.

"Jim & Andy" falls somewhere between being a behind-the-scenes doc about the making of "Man On The Moon" and an "Adaptation" (2002) style meta-narrative in which fictionalized protagonist Jim Carrey, played by non-fictional actor Jim Carrey, detaches from reason and basic self-preservation instincts in his effort to go totally method on an Andy Kaufman biopic. Carrey does an incredible Kaufman impersonation in the theatrical film released in 1999, and "Jim & Andy" demonstrates the sometimes dangerous, occasionally heart warming, and always baffling lengths Carrey went to, in order to make good and certain he nailed the part. 

"Universal didn't want the footage we took behind the scenes to surface, so that people wouldn't think I was an a**hole," Carrey explains in the trailer. Indeed, "Jim & Andy" depicts him as unhinged and ruthlessly abusive towards his co-stars and crew. But is it really Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman going out of his way to ruin "Man On The Moon"? Or is that Andy Kaufman playing Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman going out of his way to ruin "Man On The Moon"?  Yeah, that's the kind of movie this is — and the critics adored it.

"The Truman Show" basically predicts the lifestyle of every social media celebrity about a decade before "social media" and "celebrity" were phrases that routinely appeared next to each other. A relatively modest financial success relative to Carrey's other '90s hits, "The Truman Show" remains highly relevant as possibly the most immediately prescient Hollywood movie of the last handful of decades. 

Truman Burbank is the main character of a television show he has no idea exists, having lived his entire life on a soundstage disguised as a small town, inhabited by actors pretending to be his friends and family. Due to the massive sums of advertising bucks he obliviously rakes in, Truman can't know the truth, and he's certainly not allowed to leave. "The Truman Show" became an instant classic, still applauded for its darkly comic heart and clear-eyed take on celebrity culture.

Having amassed colossal celebrity status and personal wealth by playing a series of insane idiots, Carrey plays the only normal person in "The Truman Show" – it's the world he inhabits that's grown tasteless and irrational. One might argue the film sums up the big punchline of his whole movie career: Jim Carrey does his best work when he isn't doing the "Jim Carrey" shtick.