Early Buzz: 'Dumb And Dumber To' Is Indeed Dumb
Twenty years have passed since Lloyd and Harry left us in the original Dumb and Dumber. This weekend, they're back with Dumb and Dumber To. The press got to see the film Wednesday night ahead of the Friday opening. The buzz is... well, find out after the jump by reading some Dumb and Dumber To reviews.
Let's make one thing clear right off the bat: Not everyone is going to laugh at this movie. If you didn't like Jim Carrey's antics 20 years ago, odds are he's not going to change your mind now. If goofy pratfalls, outrageous gross-out humor, and people doing absurd and profoundly foolish things to one another doesn't sound appealing, save your money. If you're too good to laugh at the sight of a cat pooping feathers, you should probably seek entertainment elsewhere. Don't go see this movie because I liked it and then send me a tweet complaining it was stupid. I'll tell you right now what I'd tweet back: "Yes, exactly." This movie is stupendously stupid.
For fans of the original, which was a true high-water mark in Hollywood buffoonery, it may be tough to resist the charm of seeing these two actors play stupid again—and both Carrey and Daniels slip into their old chemistry with uncanny ease. But the buzz wears off quickly, harshed as it is by the increasingly sad spectacle of two fiftysomething movie stars acting like horny, leering teenagers. When, during a science conference, Harry and Lloyd shout "show us your tits" in unison at a young woman onstage, it becomes clear that the characters are now less guileless nincompoops than dirty old men. This time around, they're gross (and dumb) in all the wrong ways.
D&D To visually checks off all of the first film's hallmarks: the dog-groomer van, the upside-down breath spray moment, Petey the parakeet's blind owner, the ”most annoying sound in the world.” The occasional clever sight gag proves the Farrellys are down but not quite out (a good one has Harry and Lloyd riding a bike together...that's already mounted on a bus' bike rack). But the material feels more desperate than funny (”yankos los pee-pee,” for example, is said to Mexican orderlies regarding a catheter mishap). Carrey and Daniels are forced to wring this middling material so hard they must have calluses. The ultimate sad realization is not that Dumb & Dumber To doesn't match the original's good-time quotient, but that it might not even be as good as—yikes—Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.
What may have been subversive and irreverent in 1994, now just seems vulgar, hateful and tone-deaf — from their unabashedly misogynistic treatment of women (including Kathleen Turner as Penny's mom) to their insidious racism. In the harsh light of 2014, their juvenile buffoonery looks embarrassing and lazy. It's hard to imagine a new generation latching on to this brand of humor.
Hilarity is hard to come by, though. While it's amusing to see Harry impersonating a genius at the science gathering, making stupid remarks that are misinterpreted for piercing insight, or watching an exasperated Turner chide the duo for their cluelessness, these are small compensations for overall staleness. When the gags a movie is most confident in — the ones it uses three or four times, as if they were sure things — involve pushing unsuspecting pedestrians into a bush or riffing on "Bond, James Bond," something's wrong in the yuk factory.
The picture lasts an hour and 50 minutes but it feels like three days. It is annoying and exhausting, and I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not this is part of the Farrellys' twisted design. During one ceaseless sequence I actually muttered: "Ugh, I can't take any more!" and my colleague seated beside me chuckled in agreement. We were laughing, but by God did we want to get out of there.
Forbes:Dumb and Dumber To is exactly the Dumb and Dumber sequel that we deserve. Now for the record, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels haven't lost a step and at least a few of the jokes elicit solid laughs. But most of the jokes fall flat and the tone of the film coarsens, with our heroes now not just dimwitted but also outright mean and bullying. The charm of the original, to the extent that the original was an enjoyable character farce that led to better things for all participants, is long gone. This is not the Dumb and Dumber sequel we needed, but it's the one we deserved for inexplicably clamoring for a second installment in the first place.Hitfix:
There are gags that work, that pay off in a big way, and gags that fall flat, derailing entire sequences. Because the world around them is so absurd, the film's attempts at creating some genuine heart for Harry and Lloyd doesn't really work. It's all played way too silly for any of it to count. For me, the biggest problem is an unfortunate by-product of getting too familiar with a comedy filmmaker. By now, I know the way the Farrelly Brothers build gags, and I have a pretty good idea of how they'll twist a punchline, and so much of comedy really working on you is surprise. It's not their fault... they are very true to their own voices, and I think they've made exactly the movie they set out to make. It's just that it felt familiar to me, and that muted the film's overall impact.