These days, Jim Carrey is most famous for playing the nefarious adversary Dr. Ivo Robotnik in a trilogy of Sonic the Hedgehog movies. For an entire generation of moviegoers, Carrey and this baddie are inseparable. However, believe it or not, at the domestic box office, the Sonic movies aren’t among his two biggest motion pictures. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 narrowly misses that honor by being his third-biggest movie domestically, but his most lucrative features were launched longer before that video game movie was on anyone’s radar.
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The two biggest Jim Carrey star vehicles might surprise you given that one centers on a character that isn’t an original creation exclusive to this comedic powerhouse. The other is a feature of his that’s no longer quite as ubiquitous in GIFs or merchandise than Dumb or Dumber or Ace Ventura. However, both titles reflect one unavoidable truth: for a while there, Carrey was the king of the big screen yuk fest.
The Holly Jolly Box Office Victor of Carrey’s Career
In November 2000, How the Grinch Stole Christmas hit theaters in hopes of mimicking the box office glory of another Carrey movie released by Universal/Imagine Entertainment, Liar Liar. That 1997 feature’s $181.4 million domestic cume would easily get surpassed by Carrey’s Grinch. Once all the dollars and cents were counted, this Ron Howard directorial effort amassed $261.93 million in North America. That didn’t just make it a smash hit, it turned Grinch into 2000’s biggest movie domestically.
This particular box office moneymaker was a perfect example of how combining multiple fanbases at once can lead to money galore. With How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Carrey’s already sizable fanbase was combined with the iconic notoriety of the original Dr. Seuss book. Seeing it translated into live-action for the first time made it a must-see event for moviegoers at the dawn of the 21st century. Thus, Carrey secured what remains, to this day, his biggest movie in North America.
In second place is another impressive box office performer: Bruce Almighty. Grossing $242.7 million in North America alone, Almighty represents a bygone era when an original theatrical comedy could pull in $200+ million without blinking. This feature’s premise of “What if Jim Carrey was God?” was combined with a prime Memorial Day release date slot and beloved Friends fixture Jennifer Aniston to become a smash hit for the ages. Carrey didn’t even need the Dr. Seuss brand name to score a box office hit bigger than anything, say, Adam Sandler had ever headlined.
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Both projects emerged in the early 2000s, an era where Carrey was at the height of his box office allure. Residual goodwill from Dumb & Dumber, Liar, Liar, and other titles still lingered profoundly enough in the American psyche to make whatever he did next a must-see event. In other words, it was a perfect case of “right place, right time” for these movies. Already-appealing mainstream concepts were combined with a movie star at the peak of his face.
How Come Carrey Never Reached Those Box Office Heights Again?
Until he started anchoring Sonic movies, it did look like Carrey would never ever get a chance to come even close to those two early 2000s hits ever again. Part of that was simply his dwindling presence as a mainstream leading man. Between Yes Man in December 2008 and Sonic the Hedgehog in February 2020, Carrey only headlined two live-action movies. The days of him anchoring three box office hits in 1994 alone were long gone.
With Carrey M.I.A. from theatrical movies, there were simply minimal opportunities to try and dethrone Bruce Almighty or How the Grinch Stole Christmas from their respective box office perches. Plus, the world of live-action comedies radically changed by the end of the 2000s. As dwindling numbers for titles like Yes Man and Mr. Popper’s Penguins showed, audiences weren’t as guaranteed to show up in droves again for 2003’s hottest comedic schtick.
Still, once the Sonic movies rolled around in the 2020s, Carrey maximizing his silly physicality-oriented acting styles for Robotnik certainly didn’t ward away any moviegoers. On the contrary, these have turned into some of his biggest moneymakers ever and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is tracking to also become a major hit for all involved. Still, even the first two Sonic installments haven’t come close to matching the biggest Jim Carrey movies ever domestically. Bruce Almighty and How the Grinch Stole Christmas both reflect bygone eras, both for Carrey’s career and theatrical comedies in general.
