Dumb and Dumber To
Director: Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Starring: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle
109 mins; Class 15;
KRS Releasing Ltd
Your enjoyment of Dumb and Dumber To depends mostly on which side of Jim Carrey you are a fan of.
If, like me, you prefer the actor / comedian’s deeper, less showy roles (The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or I Love you Philip Morris), then sitting through this may be as painful as it was for me.
The original Dumb and Dumber, released 20 years ago, was a perfect showcase of Carrey’s trademark rubber-faced mugging and energetic, slapstick physicality.
None of it is funny
It also displayed Jeff Daniels’s manic comedy skills, the actor at the time still mostly known for his dramatic roles. The film has become something of a cult classic; and a sequel was inescapable.
That it took so long is surprising, yet even diehard fans will find that this is a completely pointless sequel; built on a very thin premise which displays its lack of original ideas – and ultimately laughs – very early in its too long 109 minutes running time.
Twenty years have passed since we last met Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) and his best pal Harry Dunne (Daniels); two men with few brain cells between them and whose life is built on puerile behaviour.
Lloyd has spent most of that time in a nursing home in a comatose state. Once he snaps out of it, he learns that Harry , who has been loyally visiting him every week, is ill and needs a kidney transplant.
Discovering that Harry has a long-lost daughter, the duo set out on a road trip to find her – in the hope she will donate a kidney to Harry to save his life.
That premise is the basis for a series of gags that never become a cohesive whole; the story taking the imbecile duo to a convention at which the greatest scientific brains are gathered.
The humour takes the level of crassness and idiocy to new lows, based for the most part on kicks in the groin, shoving into bushes, chucking banana peels into coffins and the two actors’ asinine line delivery. A subplot in which the 50-something Lloyd fantasises about bedding Harry’s 20-something daughter is simply off.
And none of it is funny, save for merely two genuinely funny lines, it is all painfully predictable. The actors seem to lack the ease which normally characterise their performances.
Carrey mugs – and shouts – his way through his lines and soon becomes largely irritating. Daniels is hampered by the one-dimensionality of his role. A completely unrecognisable Kathleen Turner turns up in a supporting role but she can’t add any class to this.
What is most shocking is that it took six writers to come up with this nonsense, including Peter and Bobby Farrelly who also directed it, and who wrote and directed the original.