For those of you who have ever been to a high school reunion its more than just a chance to catch up with old friends. Its really more of a chance to fulfill the morbid curiosity of seeing which of your former classmates got fat or sometimes just to see if they even changed at all. To die hard fans the release of “Dumb and Dumber To” is a long awaited opportunity to check in on their old pals Lloyd and Harry to see if they got any dumber. As the title of the movie would suggest they most certainly did and it makes for a delightfully dumb reunion.
Making a sequel to a movie that picks up twenty years after the first is not an easy task but the Farrelly brothers do a credible job of shamelessly sticking to the comedic formula of the first film. This tactic doesn’t always work well for sequels as fans of the “The Hangover” and “21 Jump Street” can attest to. The sequels to those films came across as stale and predictable giving reason for concern that “Dumb and Dumber To” would suffer the same fate.
Fortunately fans of Dumb and Dumber can rest assure that the idiotic beauty of the first film is still very safely in the hands of the very capable Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels who pick up right where they left off as though the twenty years that have passed was no more than twenty minutes. This dynamically dumb duo bring back the dumb with all the swashbuckling comedy panache of the first film.
In the first film Harry, played by Daniels, says to Lloyd, played by Carrey, “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this…and totally redeem yourself!” This famous line could easily have been used to describe the opening moments of the film when Lloyd reveals to Harry that he has been the victim of a twenty year prank in which Lloyd has been posing as an invalid. Harry quickly gets his revenge by yanking out Lloyd’s urinary catheter and it just keeps getting dumber from there.
Normally that wouldn’t be viewed as a positive but in the case of Harry and Lloyd the continuation of their dumbfoundingly stupid actions as they less than cleverly track down the long lost daughter of Harry in hopes of obtaining her kidney serves as incredibly low brow entertainment that delights.
The Farrelly brothers deliver a film that much like the original has a thin and thinner plot but absolutely delivers the dumb in way that allows Carrey and Daniels to show off their carefully crafted comic chops. The Farrelly brothers successfully manage to put Harry and Lloyd in similarly humorous situations that build on their idiotic character traits in a way that still feels fresh rather than recycled.
In one rather smelly scene, while driving in a hearse, Lloyd and Harry try to convince an unwilling passenger to engage in a who dunnit fart game. While this scene has shades of a similar scene from the first film it builds on it rather than copying it. This is where the film succeeds by fusing the past with the present with humor that builds on the complete lack of intellectual development by Lloyd and Harry.
Carrey is simply marvelous in reprising his role with an almost feverish comic energy that surpasses his efforts from the first film. Whether its shamelessly mocking the parents of a deceased friend or mistakenly pleasuring an old woman in a rest home Carrey takes his often psychopathic humor to a whole new level that will entertain both old and new fans alike. His antics will undoubtedly lead to a legion of fans maniacally ringing doorbells incessantly as an ode to the second most annoying sound in the world.
For the younger crowd who for some insane unexplainable reason have not seen the first movie “Dumb and Dumber To” will deliver a series of hilarious pranks and painfully awkward scenes delivered in a hysterical fashion by Carrey that will most certainly entertain. But for those die hard fans of the original film stepping into the theater to see this movie will be like going to that high school reunion and stepping back in time to see that your two favorite goofball friends haven’t changed a bit. It will be like putting another shrimp on the barbie.
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