Dumb and Dumber To
DIRECTORS: Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly
CAST: Jim Carey, Jeff Daniels, Laurie Holden, Kathleen Turner, Rachel Melvin, Steve Tom, Rob Riggle, Brady Bluhm
RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes
CLASSIFICATION: 13LV
RATING: *
IT would be rather, well, dumb, to expect anything approaching wit or intelligence from a film called Dumb and Dumber To.
And the Farrelly brothers, those seasoned purveyors of puerile humour, have crafted a film that doesn’t pretend to be anything but. As such, an inflated quotient of scatological jokes and crude slapstick punchlines are to be expected – it works for some, and represents the death of cinema for others. Either way, the Farrellys are making a killing.
And so it came to pass that, 20 years after the success of Dumb and Dumber, the brothers felt the time ripe for a sequel. After the debacle that was the 2003 prequel (Dumb and Dumberer), a second round of Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas was only going to work if the actors from the original film agreed to reprise their roles.
Enter Carey and Daniels, definitely two decades older, but still several sandwiches short of a picnic basket. Once again, the plot involves a road trip sparked by the nagging of Lloyd’s (Carey) loins.
This time , the object of his affection is Penny (Melvin), a tragically dim-witted girl who may just be Harry’s (Daniels) biological daughter with Fraida Felcher (Turner), the mystery slut from the first movie. Harry, in turn, needs Penny for a kidney transplant.
Our two stupor-heroes commandeer a hearse and set off in search of Penny, now adopted by scientist Dr Pichlow (Tom) and his conniving second wife, Adele (Holden). Adele is tired of her marriage, and in cahoots with Travis (Riggle) to get rid of her husband and grab the family fortune. Naturally, the arrival of Lloyd and Harry put paid to their plans and all sorts of mayhem is unleashed.
For all their foibles, and Lloyd in particular is rather mean-spirited this time around, you can’t deny the effort Harry and Lloyd put into their misguided adventures – with Lloyd somehow making it all the way to Mexico for a backstreet kidney operation in an earnest attempt to save his friend’s life. If only the same could be said about this film. Dumb and Dumber To taps into the original for most of its gags and the well is bone dry long before all the loose ends tie up ever so conveniently at the close. Carey and Daniels do their best to revive the spirit of the first film, but soon it becomes apparent that maybe they’re just too old for this type of shtick. One feels particularly sorry for Turner, a former sex symbol reduced to mining her wrinkles for laughs.
It turns out that Harry’s kidney failure was just a big prank all along, but the lazy scripting here means that the real joke is on you.
Hopefully the hearse, pummelled into motor heaven by a speeding train, was carrying the corpse of this franchise. Long may it rest in peace.
If you liked Dumb and Dumber or Cable Guy, you might like this.