Jim Carrey uses slapstick, absurdity, and farce to entertain his audiences
by
mhskid911 (student)
Marsh hi
Final Draft
Jim Carrey started out as anything but a star. Having to work as janitor so he could earn extra money for his family in high school, he didn’t exactly get a head start. However, this didn’t stop him from chasing his seemingly impossible dreams. Through thick and thin he developed his comedy, stage presence, and impressions. At age 17, he performed at a comedy club called Yuk Yuk’s and hit it dead on (“Jim Carrey” Jim Carrey). Entertaining the crowd with crazy facial expressions, acts, and impressions, he captivated his audience. After several failures and comedy attempts, he found success with the movie Earth Girls Are Easy, which led him to the TV show, In Living Color, his first big hit with his audience. Later he starred in films such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber. These movies wowed audiences with his seemingly rubber face, absurd actions, and overdramatic antics, which is what he became to be identified by. Jim Carrey is iconic through his slapstick, absurdity, and farce humor.
Jim Carrey’s slapstick is the most popular of all his comedy, and most of his comedies involve slapstick. But Jim Carrey had used slapstick to entertain others long before his movies. Even as a baby, he would entertain his family by making funny faces instead of eating his food and throughout his childhood he amused his family and classmates with his crazy facial expressions and strange impressions, mostly of animals (“Jim Carrey” Jim Carrey). Carrey was without a doubt “an incurable extrovert from day one” (“Jim Carrey” IMDb). After years of developing his comedy, stage presence, and impressions after a childhood failure, he performed at Yuk Yuk’s and made a good living doing stand-up until he moved to L.A. to fulfill his dreams. When he got to L.A., he knew “[he] was putting out something [he] didn’t want to be known for…[he] wanted to…create some things that had never been done before”(qtd. in “Jim Carrey” Biography Today). He then entered a period of experimentation where he would try out different things, seeing what was right for him. During nights of stand-up he would sometimes wriggle around on the stage like a worm during other comedians performances, and others he would experiment with every facial muscle he had. Some nights his performances would bomb, and others it would do amazing. The audience just couldn’t get enough of him. After a while, Carrey found his style. He came back as a changed comedian. Carrey “wowed audiences with…his ability to improvise routines based on audience suggestions” and his even crazier antics (“Jim Carrey” Biography Today). Soon he began to fear that he would be trapped in stand-up forever, and started to move towards TV and film. In 1994 he starred in the movie: Ace Venture: Pet Detective, a “no-brainer comedy…[that] was the breakout role for Carrey” (“Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”). Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was a perfect example of his very unique style of comedy, exhibiting his “face like Silly Putty, and [his] vivacious verbal velocity” (“Jim Carrey” 501 Movie Stars). In the same year he also came out with The Mask, a movie in which “the idea was to make the audience unsure of where [his] crazy facial expressions leave off and the special effects begin” (qtd. in “Jim Carrey” Biography Today). Another hit, Jim Carrey was climbing the ladder up to America’s most popular actor in a very short time. His slapstick humor had served him well in creating his career and shooting it up to the top of the charts.
