Dumb and Dumber To Review (1 Viewer)

[Yavin]

Better late than never, right? Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels are back as everyone's favorite numbskulls, Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, in the Farrelly Brothers' Dumb and Dumber To.

This time, they're going on a road trip to deliver a valuable package to a beautiful woman, and getting entangled in a criminal plot along the way. What's that you say? That's what they did in the first film? Well, yeah...

The difference this time is that it's 20 years later. Harry needs a kidney and discovers he has a 22-year-old daughter named Penny (Rachel Melvin) that he never knew about. So he and Lloyd travel to Maryland to try and find her (and hopefully borrow a kidney). They discover that her adoptive dad is a Nobel prize-winning scientist.

Yadda, yadda, yadda... long story short, he's sent her to a TED-like conference in El Paso to deliver a speech on his behalf, but she's forgotten to bring his "billion dollar invention" with her. So Harry and Lloyd are tasked with getting it to her safely. Meanwhile, they have to contend with his cheating wife and her lover, who are scheming to kill Harry and Lloyd steal the invention for themselves.

Here's an excerpt from my full review:

The good news is that the approach works fairly well, largely because of the vast number of years separating this film from the original. There's a fitting analogy to be found in an brief exchange between Harry and Lloyd, when Harry asks Lloyd why he decided to wait twenty years to reveal he'd been faking his mental breakdown. "Wouldn't it have been just as funny if you stopped after ten years?" Harry asks. To which Lloyd replies, "Yeah. But not as." Likewise, had Dumb and Dumber To been released shortly after its predecessor, audiences would surely have written it off as a blatant cash-grab. But as it stands, the plot similarities and callbacks play to our collective sense of nostalgia. For there's a lot of satisfaction to be had in watching the two leads slip fondly back into their old roles.As for how well the movie stands up on its own merits, humor-wise — well, it can be somewhat of a mixed bag. But rest assured, its game cast — including Kathleen Turner as Penny's mannish biological mother, Fraida — is certainly one of the film's strong suits. On the whole, there's no shortage of sight gags, verbal puns, gross-out jokes and other farcical acts of juvenile delinquency (committed by middle-aged men) to tickle audiences' funny bones. Sure, the Farrellys are pitching low-brow comedy aimed at the broadest spectrum of moviegoers. But with Carrey and Daniels as their salesmen, you're bound to buy into some of it.

3.5 out of 5.

 

[Yavin]

... Noticed the "Dumb and Dumber To" was changed to "Dumb and Dumber Two" in the thread title. Actually, it wasn't a typo...

 

[schan1269]

Whose knot up wit the Dumb & Dumber kanen?

 

[Tim Glover]

Saw this friday night,...had low expectations but this was truly just awful. Really only had one true funny moment.

wasted 109 minutes. Love Jim Carrey though but this one was a DUD.

2/10

 

[MatthewA]

I didn't think it was terrible at all. I pretty much expected they'd follow the same story structure as the original (Airplane II and Ghostbusters II did, too), and I knew it wouldn't be as good as the original, and it isn't (see prior examples). But it's better than that prequel by such a wide margin, I recommend it. Kathleen Turner had some funny parts, as did the girl playing the illegitimate daughter. And you'll have to stay for the very end to see another character from the original film return.

3.5/5