Last year, Jim Carrey’s The Bad Batch, managed to gross just $181,000 in theaters — and that is the good news. Carrey’s latest movie, the $4.5 million thriller Dark Crimes, just went directly to home video.
Yep, for a measly $6.99, you can watch Jim Carrey’s latest in the comfort of your home; that is, if you really want to. Dark Crimes earned a bad-as-bad-can-be 0% at Rotten Tomatoes, so you might want to wait for Netflix, or skip it altogether.
What a fall.
What a collapse.
What a breathtaking implosion of the aging Carrey’s career, a juggernaut that began in 1994 with the come-from-nowhere blockbuster Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and held on for another 14 years when Carrey’s name could still drive a forgettable piece junk like Yes Man to $97 million.
The last ten years have not been kind to the 56-year-old. I Love you, Phillip Morris was roundly ignored ($2 million). The high-concept (but lifeless) Mr. Popper’s Penguins probably failed to make its money back ($68 million). The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Kick-Ass 2 were both stillborn ($22 million and $29 million). And while the labored and forgettable Dumb and Dumber To did okay ($86 million), all anyone remembers is how the magic disappeared.
On top of some awful professional choices, Carrey’s other mistake has been his determination to squander what once appeared to be an endless reservoir of goodwill with the public. America’s funnyman has become a sour, angry, hectoring scold; a bitter has been so out of touch with the common man, back in 2013, the Oscar-less Carrey thought it would be hilarious to mock Oscar-winner Charlton Heston in a Funny or Die music video — attack a man who had already been dead five years.
Carrey’s bad taste ended up backfiring in his face, specifically over these lyrics that falsely claimed Heston’s movies “are no longer in demand.”
Charlton Heston movies are no longer in demand
His immortal soul may lay forever in the sand
The angels wouldn’t take him up to heaven like he planned
‘Cause they couldn’t pry that gun from his cold dead hand
What was especially humiliating for Carrey is that later that same year, more people watched a 47-year-old rerun of a Charlton Heston movie on TV than saw Carrey’s newest movie.
Nevertheless, who would have ever guessed that Jim Carrey’s career could hit such a rock bottom, that a new Jim Carrey movie would be dumped into the direct-to-video bin, that the distributors would not even try to four-wall it somewhere to build buzz. But, you see, in order to do that, your star still has to be able to attract some kind of audience.
Sadly, those days are almost certainly over. On top of losing his edge and his audience, Carrey has devolved into a partisan and bitter scold, a mean-spirited jerk reduced to using what looks like crayons to scribble his daily dose of hate.
At age 76, Heston was still acting in movies directed by Oliver Stone, Tim Burton, Warren Beatty, and Michael Bay.
At age 56, Carrey is going straight-to-video and only able to garner attention using Twitter as the refrigerator upon which he scotch tapes his latest tantrum.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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