Dumb and Dumber To
DUMB AND DUMBER TO (2015)
Starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Kathleen Turner, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin, Steve Tom, Tembi Locke, Paul Blackthorne, Michael Yama, Nancy Yee, Grant James, Taylor St. Clair, Don Lake, Patricia French, Lindsay Ayliffe, Eddie Shin, Atkins Estimond, Billy Snider, Brady Bluhm, Cam Neely, June Shannon, Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean and Bill Murray.
Screenplay by Sean Anders & John Morris, and Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, & Bennett Yellin, & Mike Cerrone.
Directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly.
Distributed by Universal Pictures. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.
About fifteen years on from the brief window when their so-dumb-it’s-funny style of comedy briefly made Peter and Bobby Farrelly the biggest names in film comedy (due to their run of hits which included Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary) the brothers have been flailing around looking for some kind of relevance.
For well over a decade after Mary, the Farrelly’s helmed some of the worst and most tasteless films coming out of Hollywood: Me Myself & Irene, Shallow Hal, The Heartbreak Kid and Stuck on You. The fact that the guys’ last couple of movies – Hall Pass and The Three Stooges – were just kinda bad, and not actively awful, was an odd triumph for them.
However, the Farrellys had a higher goal in mind than just not to suck. They wanted to recapture their Hollywood zeitgeist, to become a force to reckon with again. Therefore, they decided to do what was technically their first sequel, a look back after 20 years at Harry and Lloyd, the moron heroes of Dumb and Dumber.
I say technically, because Dumb and Dumber To (the misspelling of two in the title gives you an idea of the level of comedy here) is actually the third Dumb and Dumber movie. The Farrelly Brothers want to pretend that the 2003 prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd never happened. In fairness, most people who saw Dumb and Dumberer also would like to pretend it never happened. Also in fairness, the Farrelly Brothers and the stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels had nothing to do with the prequel. So while technically this film is Dumb and Dumber Three (sorry, I can’t think of a clever way to misspell the number), we’ll give them a pass.
Now, I’m going to come clean here. I’ve never seen the original Dumb and Dumber. This is because I honestly find Jim Carrey an annoyance, not the least bit funny and a simply horrible actor. And, honestly, Dumb and Dumber To is not going to really change my mind about that. Yet, a funny thing has happened. When the original Dumb and Dumber came out, Carrey was ubiquitous, you were expected to bust a nut seeing him doing the same stupid shtick over and over again. However, as the years have gone by and his career has sunk deeper and deeper into the muck, what used to be actively annoying about him has become somehow less objectionable. It’s still not all that funny, but now its more pathetic than annoying.
Jeff Daniels, on the other hand, can act. And seeing him throw himself so willingly into a moron role that is so far out of type for him – remember, this sequel originally came out as he was winding down his Emmy winning role in Aaron Sorkin’s whip-smart The Newsroom – was kind of a hoot to see.
The truth is, finally catching up with Dumb and Dumber To on Blu-ray (I missed the brief theatrical run) I did laugh a lot more than I expected I would. It wasn’t a great (or even good) movie, for the life of me I can’t see how it took six people to write and like most Farrelly Brothers movies it ran out of steam long before the film ended. However, I have to admit it, at least sporadically it had the goods and was laugh out loud funny.
Besides, any movie that would snag Bill Murray for a cameo (Murray had worked with the Farrellys in Kingpin and I guess he liked them), and then have him do his entire role in a hazmat suit so that the audience could not see who he was – that is a movie that has some cracked genius behind it.
Dumb and Dumber To will make you laugh, even though you may be ashamed of yourself later. Come to think of it, that pretty much defines the entire Farrelly Brothers filmography.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 20, 2015.
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