I should start this review with a caveat: I'm not a fan of Jim Carrey. His manic, over-the-top comedy is occasionally funny, but often gratingly idiotic. I know that's the point. It has just never appealed to me. So I went into Dumb and Dumber To with a lot of trepidation. In the end, I laughed a lot in what amounts to an exceedingly mediocre and poorly concocted film. The jokes are quite funny at times and I was actually surprised by the cleverness of the humor. However, there are long stretches of tedium and blandness in addition to the inspired moments. Not to mention the nonsensical and frustrating plot. This is a funny, yet oddly disposable film that you likely won't remember not long after initially watching it.
Dumb and Dumber To continues the misadventures of Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey). When the film begins, we find Lloyd in a mental hospital, where he's seemingly been for 20 years. Turns out, that was all a big gag to fool Harry. Lloyd leaves the mental hospital and the two best friends are reunited. However, more problems arise when Harry reveals that he's experiencing kidney failure and that he needs a new kidney soon or he will die. The two then set off on a series of adventures to find Harry's long-lost daughter in the hopes that she will give him a kidney.
Dumb and Dumber To is an unquestionably bad movie. It's a poorly written story, drawn out over the course of an incredibly long film and it has long stretches of averageness. And honestly- who would have expected anything else? But the real crime of Dumb and Dumber To is how extremely and incredibly forgettable it is. Few jokes warrant more than a brief chuckle and the number of true laughs pales in comparison to 2014's comedy instant classics, 22 Jump Street and Neighbors. Dumb and Dumber To is crass, crude, surprisingly raunchy, stupid, moronic and ridiculous, yet it just never truly connects in the way that it should.
Despite the fact that I didn't honestly like this movie at all, I will admit that I laughed a lot. For a movie franchise that thrives on rudimentary fart and poop jokes, Dumb and Dumber To is packed with clever gags that poke fun at the characters' idiocy. How smart the dumb humor was actually ended up being quite shocking to me. You can definitely have a lot of fun with these characters and Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels portray Lloyd and Harry quite well. The supporting cast is decidedly less spectacular. Rob Riggle is quite funny in two roles and Rachel Melvin plays a total idiot well, but they're really the only bright spots.
I also appreciated the idiotic brotherly bond that the two main characters have. The Farrelly Brothers know what they have in Carrey and Daniels and they often exploit their chemistry to great comedic and sometimes emotional success. You truly feel the connection between the characters and it was a bright spot for the movie.
Nonetheless, the story in this movie is so basic, so crushingly uninteresting that you can't help but groan. I know that nobody is truly going into Dumb and Dumber looking for a compelling story or a consistent tone, but I feel like that's just a cop-out excuse for bad movies. One could say that they're just going into 22 Jump Street or Superbad for the laughs, but they'll more than likely still be interested in the story. That's why I don't think that the tedious, convoluted and nonsensical story in Dumb and Dumber To should be excused.
And say all you want about wanting to see this movie just for the laughs, but there are long stretches during this movie where no laughs are to be found. At certain points during the movie, I realized that I hadn't laughed for the past 15-20 minutes and that was concerning to me. This is also a very long movie and to be honest, it felt much longer than Interstellar did (which is saying a lot). Another misstep comes at the end of the film, where it is essentially revealed that the plot of the film was entirely pointless. I won't discuss more here because of spoilers, but this ending frustrated and annoyed me to no end.
The basic problem with this movie is that it is so blandly generic and forgettable. There's just nothing there to remember or care about. I saw this movie only a mere two days ago, and I've already forgotten all but a few of the really memorable gags. There's truly nothing in it that distinguishes it from the original film and there's nothing that made it stand out from any of the other great comedies this year. It wasn't a movie that I actively hated watching. It just reeked of mediocrity and tedium.
To absolutely no one's surprise, Dumb and Dumber To is a moronic, overlong, drawn out, poorly scripted, poorly structured and just plain bad movie. However, it is quite funny at times and if you liked the first film in the franchise and really don't care about any of the things that I just listed, then go for it. But for the rest of the world, this is a movie that will fall from the collective consciousness faster than the blink of an eye. It's that forgettable and disposable.
THE FINAL GRADE: C (5.7/10)
Image Credits: YouTube, Nuke the Fridge, The Independent, Flickering Myth
Dumb and Dumber To continues the misadventures of Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey). When the film begins, we find Lloyd in a mental hospital, where he's seemingly been for 20 years. Turns out, that was all a big gag to fool Harry. Lloyd leaves the mental hospital and the two best friends are reunited. However, more problems arise when Harry reveals that he's experiencing kidney failure and that he needs a new kidney soon or he will die. The two then set off on a series of adventures to find Harry's long-lost daughter in the hopes that she will give him a kidney.
Dumb and Dumber To is an unquestionably bad movie. It's a poorly written story, drawn out over the course of an incredibly long film and it has long stretches of averageness. And honestly- who would have expected anything else? But the real crime of Dumb and Dumber To is how extremely and incredibly forgettable it is. Few jokes warrant more than a brief chuckle and the number of true laughs pales in comparison to 2014's comedy instant classics, 22 Jump Street and Neighbors. Dumb and Dumber To is crass, crude, surprisingly raunchy, stupid, moronic and ridiculous, yet it just never truly connects in the way that it should.
I also appreciated the idiotic brotherly bond that the two main characters have. The Farrelly Brothers know what they have in Carrey and Daniels and they often exploit their chemistry to great comedic and sometimes emotional success. You truly feel the connection between the characters and it was a bright spot for the movie.
The basic problem with this movie is that it is so blandly generic and forgettable. There's just nothing there to remember or care about. I saw this movie only a mere two days ago, and I've already forgotten all but a few of the really memorable gags. There's truly nothing in it that distinguishes it from the original film and there's nothing that made it stand out from any of the other great comedies this year. It wasn't a movie that I actively hated watching. It just reeked of mediocrity and tedium.
To absolutely no one's surprise, Dumb and Dumber To is a moronic, overlong, drawn out, poorly scripted, poorly structured and just plain bad movie. However, it is quite funny at times and if you liked the first film in the franchise and really don't care about any of the things that I just listed, then go for it. But for the rest of the world, this is a movie that will fall from the collective consciousness faster than the blink of an eye. It's that forgettable and disposable.
THE FINAL GRADE: C (5.7/10)
Image Credits: YouTube, Nuke the Fridge, The Independent, Flickering Myth
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