mask Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Following the success of the Sex and the City movie, I was really, really hopeful (noted in passing here) for a Golden Girls movie featuring the four stars of the ever-popular TV series. Unfortunately, my dream can no longer be fulfilled, because one of the ladies has passed on. Early this morning, at her home in Los Angeles, Estelle Getty (aka "Sophia") died, three days shy of turning 85.

Though the cause of death was not specified, Getty had been suffering from Lewy Body Dementia since at least 2000, when she stopped making public appearances. She was not even able to appear in a Golden Girls reunion that aired on Lifetime in 2003. Obviously, she wouldn't have been able to star in a theatrical film, either.

Getty was best known for her role on The Golden Girls, but movie fans will forever remember her also as the titular matriarch teamed up with Sylvester Stallone in the dreadful action comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. She also appears in Stuart Little, Mask and, in a pre-famous minor role, Tootsie. My favorite, though, is her feisty department store owner in Mannequin. Or, maybe her appearance in the surreal clip above, which comes from her awesome 1993 workout video.

Cinematical quarterback M. Fischer recently shared with us a fresh piece of Hollywood news effluvium regarding the creation of an Ace Ventura 3, which will go into production without the inclusion of one Jim Carrey, also known as "the actor who played Ace Ventura in two movies already." And while I have no real problem with studios churning out brain-dead sequels that nobody wants (hey, they're fun to review!), I just had to drop by and share my thoughts on this news, and those thoughts are these:

Someone at New Line just got hold of the world's most powerful pound of marijuana.

Seriously? An Ace Ventura 3 without Jim Carrey? This sounds like the sort of movie news that you'd find on the front cover of JoBlo's on April 1st. Why do I say this? Well, it's certainly not because I think that "Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: The Aardvark Chronicles" would necessarily make for a good movie, but let's just look at the numbers for a second...

• Dumb and Dumber (1994, production budget of $17 million, starring Jim Carrey): $127 million domestic box office / $247m worldwide
• Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003, production budget of $19m, not starring Jim Carrey): $26m domestic / $39m worldwide

Now, you don't have to be Paul Dergarabedian to figure out the formula here: People think Jim Carrey is funny. It ain't the title; it's the star, you knuckleheads. But the lesson was made even clearer right here:

• The Mask (1994, production budget of $23m, starring Jim Carrey): $119m domestic / $351m worldwide
• Son of the Mask (2005, production budget of ... $84m, not starring Jim Carrey): $17m domestic / $57m worldwide

I mean, c'mon. If the message were any clearer, it'd come with a free bottle of Windex: Stop making Carrey-less sequels to movies that ONLY made money because of Jim Carrey in the first place! Why not just stick 39 million one-dollar bills into a giant suitcase and drop it into the gibbon cage at the zoo?

And just for the record, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) cost $14m and made $107m worldwide; Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995), which looked a lot cheaper, made $212m worldwide. Depending on who New Line hires to play Ace Ventura Jr., we're looking at a global gross of about ... $49 million. I mean no disrespect to the studio that gave us Freddy Krueger, Austin Powers and Blade, but c'mon fellas; surely there's a better way to spend your Lord of the Rings booty than this.

[Special thanks to BoxOfficeMojo for the stats.]