Is ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Call’s’ Rhino Butt Birth Scene Still Hilarious?

Seriously, what won’t a sixth grader laugh at? A loud and long burp, a basic ass catchphrase, a teacher dry heaving, any testicular trauma, a fart from anyone at anytime anywhere–tweens are an easy mark. As a former sixth-grader, I know this is a fact. I laughed at a lot of stuff in 1995 and 1996, from that monkey on Friends to Good Burger sketches on All That. But nothing, no Chandler zinger or Vital Information factoid, could compare to the insanity and hilarity of the rhino butt birth scene in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

I didn’t see this movie in theaters. Instead, the Ace Ventura sequel was but a layer in a tower of Blockbuster Video rentals I climbed while home sick from school, recovering from a tonsillectomy. That sweaty, horrifying scene almost single-handedly wrecked my recovery process because it made my throat erupt in laughter. Now that When Nature Calls is on Hulu, I have to wonder, is the butt birth scene still hilarious now that I’m 34?

Sidenote: being a stickler for precision, I actually don’t know if “butt birth” is the right terminology. I have no idea what a rhinoceros birth looks like and, quite frankly, I don’t want to look it up. Not on my personal laptop, and certainly not on my work computer in full view of the rest of Team Decider. My eyes have already seen Jim Carrey force himself out of a rhino’s rear end, and that’s enough for today. Also, “butt birth” is just a funny phrase.

Anyway, back to the butt birth. It comes about 44 minutes into the movie–a movie I, uh, don’t think has aged particularly well. In what ways, you wonder? The logline of this one is essentially “Ace Ventura goes to Africa,” so, you know what ways. The rhino in question is actually an animatronic one, a mobile spy lab used by Ace to spy on the bad guy (played by you-know-him-when-you-see-him Bob Gunton!).

While playing secret agent man, the rhino’s lone fan craps out. The rhino ride turns into a sauna and Ace strips all the way down just to keep from overheating. You know where this is going. The hatch breaks from the inside, trapping Ace inside a sweltering metal death carcass. But then he sees the light.

Why this animatronic rhino had an itty bitty butt hole, who knows? But to apply logic to When Nature Calls is a such a fool’s errand even Ace Ventura wouldn’t attempt it. The pet detective sees his means of escape and he seizes it–just as two Jeep loads of tourists on safari pull up to snap photos of what they think is a real rhino.

What follows is nightmarish, hilarious, or a mix of both.

Y’all ever seen Fire In the Sky, the alien abduction movie that’s filled with torturous goop and latex? This is like that, exactly as disturbing, but somehow… funny?? It’s only funny because of the onlookers, a totally square family that goes from fascinated to vomitous when they realize that rhino is giving birth to a very shrill, very naked man. If anyone’s looking for a project, please someone edit that family into the probing scene in Fire In the Sky. It might take it from terrifying to hilarious!

Ace finally pushes himself free, falling sweaty and nude to the ground (again, kind of like Fire In the Sky).

It’s gross. It’s upsetting. This rhino butt birth is even grosser and upsetting when you’ve had to spend time making screengrabs and GIFs of it. But you know what? It’s still funny. It’s funny because it is beyond preposterous. The movie had to do so much heavy-lifting to get to this sequence! They had to establish that this pet detective has an animatronic rhino, that the fan broke, that the sun was beating down, that he had to get naked, and that a group of tourists were stopping by at that exact moment. So much setup for such a dumb, totally inconsequential gag–but absolute commitment to absurdity is funny! I laughed! I might not laugh at much else in this movie, but I laughed at this.

I guess some things are always funny–and a rhino butt birth is apparently one of them.

Stream Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls on Hulu