‘Dumb & Dumber To’ is just plain dumb
There was an image floating around the Internet recently that showed a calendar of all the superhero movies we’ll see in the next decade or so.
While the idea was to drum up excitement, it also showed how serious Hollywood’s originality problem is.
However, after seeing the brazen creative bankruptcy on display in “Dumb & Dumber To,” I think I’m ready for the next 10 “Avengers” movies.
That’s an incredibly sad thing to say. Plenty of people hold the original “Dumb & Dumber” somewhat dearly as one of the better goofball comedies of its day.
Its sequel, which comes two decades later, spends around 75 percent of its runtime rehashing the same jokes from the original, all in the context of a story that’s structurally identical to the first.
Lovable buffoons Harry (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd (Jim Carrey) travel halfway across the country to deliver a valuable package to a beautiful woman who has caught the eye of Lloyd.
Wacky hijinks ensue, and the two find themselves obliviously wrapped up in a criminal conspiracy.
Sound familiar? That two sentence synopsis describes both the 1994 original and its sequel. Yeah, there are some new characters and gags, but this is more or less the same movie being sold to us 20 years later.
It’s perfectly fine to make callbacks to the original movie, but it’s downright lazy to make that the crux of a comedy.
Daniels and Carrey may have been legitimately enthusiastic about returning to these characters, but that probably dissipated quickly when they realized they would be doing the same bits again.
When “Dumb & Dumber To” isn’t recycling humor from its predecessor, there’s nothing particularly refreshing or interesting to see.
It’s a typical menagerie of fart jokes and sexual innuendo, with some light racism sprinkled in for good measure.
Aside from a quick, mildly funny dig at TED talks, none of it is funny. The most dramatic reactions it elicits are stone-faced boredom and the abject sadness of its existence.
Unless you’re a big fan of being sold a worse version of a movie you’ve already seen, stay far away from “Dumb & Dumber To.”