An unwatchable train wreck of a comedy that lamely attempts to do for talented performer John Leguizamo what Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) did for Jim Carrey, this manic mess is stunningly, offensively bad. With admirably feverish desperation, star Leguizamo infuses his role of an annoying Latino nerd with oodles of energy. His vivacious antics combined with director Paul Miller's frantic camera work ought to be hilarious, but the story that Leguizamo has co-written is so astonishingly stupid and laugh-free that the film is easily tagged as a resounding flop even before the empty-headed opening credits sequence is complete. The filmmakers' disastrous misread of this genre is a stark reminder that the Carrey oeuvre looks like stupid fun but is actually pretty canny stuff when it comes to mining laughs from absurd situations. Think twice about viewing The Pest (1997), because it's an hour and a half of one's life that will never be refunded.