Nostalgia can give us some comforting feelings when we’re disillusioned with what’s going on now, but that doesn’t mean it comes without any drawbacks.
For one thing, it’s basically the root of the slew of unnecessary, disappointing remakes that we’ve seen over the last few years.
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But another issue is that it can set us up for a pitfall when we share our favorite cultural artifacts with the next generation.
That’s a reality that anyone who showed a kid Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory and forgot about how scary the boat scene was can attest to, but even that might be better than the awkwardness waiting in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective .
If you haven’t seen the movie in over 20 years, you might be wondering what could be wrong with the Jim Carrey comedy.
After all, it’s just a movie about a wacky animal detective trying to solve the disappearance of the Miami Dolphins mascot, a dolphin named Snowflake.
A premise like that would normally suggest little more than some animal-related hi-jinks, and yes, that’s mostly what goes on.
Sure, that might mean it’s going to be a little heavy on the toilet humor, but there’s nothing wrong with that every now and then, right?
Indeed, that’s likely what podcast star Joe Rogan thought when he sat down for a rewatch.
As The Mirror reported, he said on his show, “Do you know what I made the mistake of doing yesterday?” he asked.
“I watched ‘Ace Ventura: Pet Detective’ with my eight-year-old and my ten-year-old,” he said.
“I didn’t realize how transphobic that f****** movie is.”
Okay, major spoiler alert ahead!
As it turned out, the person behind Snowflake’s disappearance was once known as a football player named Ray Finkle.
After missing a field goal that cost the Dolphins the Super Bowl, Finkle retreated from the public eye.
He then transitioned into Lt. Lois Einhorn, and hatched an elaborate revenge scheme against then-Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino.
Part of the problem with this chain of events is how most of the characters react when they discover the movie’s twist.
The reactions are pretty distasteful, to say the least…
For instance, when Ace figures out that Finkle and Einhorn are the same person, he freaks out.
Ace recalls having embraced her and starts vomiting, furiously brushing his teeth, and even burning his clothes and taking a toilet plunger to his face.
By the film’s climax, Ace then explains during a police standoff why he can prove Einhorn is the one who arranged for Snowflake’s kidnapping.
This is where the situation gets even more uncomfortable.
Ace strips her down to her underwear, and shows off a bulge in the back of her panties.
He says that if she’s a woman, she is suffering from the worst case of hemorrhoids that he’s ever seen.
The officers react to this much like Ace did, by vomiting and furiously trying to scrape their tongues.
This scene seemed to particularly incense Rogan, as he said , “All the cops are throwing up…It’s off the charts. Everyone is freaking out. It is so insanely transphobic.”
Although this aspect of the movie escaped fans’ notice for decades, it was all too apparent for some who grew up trying to figure out who they are.
As Pink News reported , this had a particular effect on the upbringing of proud trans model Munroe Bergdorf.
“Seeing a scene like this including a trans person, played by a cis woman…”
“It may see trivial to some but I carried that ‘punchline’ throughout my adolescence, it made me feel guilty and confused about who I truly was, so I pushed my true self into my subconscious and tried to be someone I was not,” she said.
h/t: The Mirror