As far as sequels go, Dumb and Dumber To is perhaps the least anticipated of them all. For one thing, the original is twenty years old. For another, joint Directors and Co-Writers Bobby and Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary) are best known for making films that are either dumb or even dumber.
Now in their fifties, they still rely on endless fart gags and scatological jokes that nine-year-old boys laugh at. But they have done something rather daring in their sequel: they have brought back Jim Carrey (52) as Lloyd Christmas and Jeff Daniels (59) as Harry Dunne to appeal to the original’s middle-aged fans and to entertain a new generation who were not alive, or too young, twenty years ago. The humour has been copied so much in the past twenty years that it can hardly seem fresh, and the gross out jokes still grate, but Dumb and Dumber To still provides more laughs than most so-called comedies.
The zany plot is more complicated than you would expect for two fifty-something men who are so stupid that their idea of great joke is for Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) to have himself committed to a mental hospital for twenty years. Forget the twenty wasted years of life; for Lloyd, Harry’s (Daniels) astonishment at the revelation that he had been faking it was worth it. During that time Harry changes his friend’s colostomy bags, with Lloyd attempting to make it as disagreeable as possible. Don’t worry, Harry has a prank in store for Lloyd, but two ‘spoilers’ is one too many, even for Dumb and Dumber To.
The hospital prank is also functional: it explains the time lapse since the original film, and sets the stage for the action that follows.
Harry breaks the news to Lloyd that he needs a kidney. Since he was adopted (by an Oriental couple) his parents are not compatible, but Harry’s father gives him the post that has been accumulating since he left home. When Harry spots a postcard from old flame Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner) he believes that she was carrying Harry’s child: and a potential extra kidney. When they track down Fraida she admits she had a daughter named Fanny who she gave up for adaptation and she produces a photo. Lloyd is smitten with the attractive 20-something and now as eager to find her as is Harry.
The pair track down Fanny (Rachel Melvin) – now called Penny Pinchelow – at the home of her wealthy adoptive parents, Dr Bernard Pinchelow (Steve Tom) and his younger second wife, Adele (Laurie Holden). The joke here is that that nature vs nurture is definitively resolved when we realise that none of Dr Pinchelow’s brilliance has rubbed off on his mentally-challenged daughter.
Half way through, the film turns into a crime caper as Adele, in league with her lover and housekeeper Travis (Rob Riggle), is plotting to steal the profits from an invention that Penny is presenting to a convention in El Paso, Texas on behalf of her father. When Lloyd and Harry rush off to the convention, Travis accompanies them, hoping to prevent their success. Sometimes, however, a brain is no match for stupidity so incomprehensible that it is unanticipated, an Adele will require the assistance of Travis’s twin brother, Captain Lippencott, an assassin.
Dumb and Dumber To was Jim Carry’s biggest weekend opener in 10 years (since Bruce Almighty) in the USA. The film has grossed $130 million on a budget of $40 million (a large chunk of which has to be star salaries). This is amazing when you consider that just about half the audience was comprised of males under the age of 25, to Carrey’s 52. In the past 50 years there has been an increasing assumption, in films and on television and radio where older presenters have been tossed onto the scrap heap, that only young presenters can attract the much coveted younger audience.
Over the past 5 years, especially, film and television audiences getting older, and some of most loved directors and actors refusing to retire, we have seen a marked reversal of this thinking, a reversal that has seen a plethora of films, by older directors and with older actors. Dumb and Dumber To might just be the most audacious and, against all odds, one of the most financially successful.
Joyce Glasser – MT film reviewer
