Movie Review: 'Dumb and Dumber To'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- You're not exactly insulting it to call this comedy sequel "dumb." After all, that's sort of the point.
And Dumb and Dumber To wears its stupidity proudly and loudly.
And if you missed the misspelling in the sequel's title, then perhaps you're a card-carrying member of the target audience: stupidity-worshipping fans of the first outing.
Not too put two fine a point on it, but Dumb and Dumber To is just as dumb as Dumb and Dumber, but at least it's a tad funnier.
That doesn't make the sequel a good movie, of course, just a less disappointing one.
Dumb and Dumber To is a carbon-copy sequel, a recycling a decade later of the runaway 1994 comedy and iconic cult hit that featured Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, characters two wheels short of a wagon, armed with oodles of potty-mouthed irreverence.
It was the no-brainer, no-nuance '90s –- the Dimwit Decade –- when the smart money was on dumb movies glorifying cluelessness, offering nincompoops, numbskulls, and knuckleheads to root for, exult in, and chuckle at, while demonstrating over and over again that the difference between genius and stupidity was that genius had its limits.
Then, we the audience seemed to crave buffoonery, outrageousness, and asininity. And movies like Dumb and Dumber, with clown prince Jim Carrey out front, delivered it.
Whether we've changed at all, in all this time, about what we demand in a comedy, we'll soon see.
But back to Dumb and Dumber To, which extends its predecessor and stays on the same trail in hopes of connecting with two audiences: teenage boys and men who were teenage boys when Harry and Lloyd first rubbed their IQs together.
Twenty years after the dim-bulb buddies' last road-trip adventure, the oddly innocent imbeciles are in search of Harry's long-lost daughter, whom they just found out existed.
Because Harry needs a kidney and she, wherever she may be, may be the only possible matching donor, they set out to track her down.
One complication: the moment Lloyd gets a glimpse of her photograph, he is smitten. And Harry may not like where that could lead.
In the original, the gross-out gags were aimed so low that only viewers who cherished rude body sounds above all else (eight-year-olds, start your engines!) could truly appreciate it.
As was the case with the original, there are a handful of hearty laughs and some respectable slap-shtick shenanigans, things that would be just as amusing or even hysterical out of context as they are in.
But for every one of those knee-slapping moments, there are two cringeworthy or wince-inducing others.
And there's an element of meanness and cruelty in the sequel that wasn't quite as noticeable or questionable in the original.
The sequel was co-written (with Sean Anders, John Morris, Bennett Yellin, and Mike Cerrone) and directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly (There's Something About Mary, Stuck on You, Fever Pitch, The Three Stooges), who also wrote and directed the original. (There was also a 2003 prequel, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, which the Farrelly brothers did not direct.)
And as before, with the storyline merely a clothesline on which to hang anything-for-a-yock bits and gags, it's no surprise that the narrative runs out of gas long before the road trip is over.
Ultimately, this one touches down as a thank-you note from the firm of Carrey, Daniels, Farrelly, and Farrelly to the nostalgic fans who made the first one a hit. Newcomers, on the other hand, may well come away from the follow-up feeling glum and glummer, or numb and number.
So we'll dumb down 2 stars out of 4. The proudly brain-dead Dumb and Dumber To isn't bad because it's dumb. It's dumb because it's bad.
