Just when you thought it was safe to pop Batman Forever back in the DVD player: The internet is reminding everyone that people don’t like Jim Carrey.
The narrative resurfaced, as it often does these days, with an innocent tweet:
Instead of suggesting even more celebrities with zero haters, most respondents replied to the original tweet saying that it’s wrong, of course. Because apparently, Jim Carrey sucks:
We empathize with the final tweet — only in our case, it was our grandmother who refused to rent Jim Carrey movies in the ’90s because he made her “too nervous” with his aggressive slapstick. We’ll never forget when she found out that we’d tricked her into watching 2001’s The Majestic, which starred Carrey in a dramatic role and was merely, as we put it, a “nice story about an old movie theater.” She responded by wearing earplugs for the duration of the film.
But do people without such childhood strife have a beef with Carrey? Let’s look at a more even-handed comment about Carrey’s position on vaccines:
Indeed, Carrey seems to have been swept up in the “rich people who are suspicious of childhood vaccines because they are bored” fad. He even dated Jenny McCarthy for a time, a celebrity who positioned herself as a staunch anti-vaxxer for many years.
Carrey clarified in a now-deleted 2015 tweet that he is “not anti-vaccine,” but “anti-thimerosal, anti-mercury.” Yet, the fact that he deleted the tweet probably says something — and luckily, he wasn’t one of those people railing against the COVID vaccine when hundreds of people were dying every day.
Then there’s the time Carrey forcibly kissed Alicia Silverstone on stage after winning an award for The Cable Guy. We’re not gonna defend this one — it’s total male-entitlement BS. He should have known it was inappropriate back then, and we hope he regrets it now.
So yes, the internet has proven that Jim Carrey has his share of critics. But do the haters have enough ammunition for us not to secretly stream Mr. Popper’s Penguins while our fiancé is asleep in the other room? We’ll never tell, at least online.