Dumb and Dumber To Review: All Hail the Second Dumbing

The comedy sequel is a worthy successor, even though it's almost 2 decades late.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

Comedy sequels are a juice rarely worth the squeeze. You could count on one hand the number of comedic sequels that have matched or surpassed their predecessors with fingers left to spare. For whatever reason, recreating the unique magic of a successful comedy has proven historically difficult for Hollywood. At their worst, such sequels are carbon-copied exercises in laziness like the Hangover sequels, limply retracing the steps of what worked in the original film to vastly diminished success. Generally the best one can hope for from a comedy sequel is something like 22 Jump Street, which lacks the freshness and inspiration of the first film, but has just enough energy and new jokes to at least justify its existence.

Given the disappointment-strewn battlefield of comedy sequelization, there was every reason in the world to be wary of, if not outright terrified by, the prospect of Dumb and Dumber To. After all, this isn’t just the follow-up to a solid comedy from a couple of years ago. The original ‘Dumb and Dumber’ is a bona fide comedy classic going back twenty years. It arguably holds a place among the funniest films ever made. If something like Horrible Bosses 2 comes out and disappoints, no one is going to be too broken up about it, but Dumb and Dumber? Messing that up would hurt. One need only look back to last year’s Anchorman 2, another belated sequel to a stone-cold classic, for a cautionary tale. That film came and went, leaving no impression whatsoever. Where the original Anchorman was quoted into oblivion, find me anyone who can remember two jokes from ‘Anchorman 2.’ It wasn’t bad, it was simply forgettable, which is far worse. At least bad you remember.

It’s with a huge sigh of relief that I can confirm that Dumb and Dumber To manages to beat the comedy-sequel curse. It’s a worthy successor to the original and extremely funny in its own right. Better still, even though it echoes the first film in several ways, it’s not beholden to it. It has a fresh crop of jokes to play around with and the bulk of them are really great. It doesn’t feel like a lethargic retread, which immediately places it ahead of its comedy-sequel brethren.

Once again, we follow the misadventures of Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey), lifelong friends and accident-prone ne’er-do-wells with single-digit IQs. The film opens by filling us in on what the two have been up to for the last twenty years (in a terrific joke that I’ll not spoil, even if all the trailers have). Reunited, the duo sets out on a mission. Harry has a failing kidney and is in desperate need of a transplant. After first hitting up his parents, Harry learns that they are not a biological match to him for reasons that he should have figured out decades ago were he not an imbecile. But a postcard from 1991 informs him that he had a daughter by local trollop Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner) which he never knew about. With the knowledge that there’s a grown woman out there who is his genetic match, Harry sets out in pursuit of the child he never knew. Lloyd comes along, ostensibly to help his buddy attain that much-needed kidney, but more because he’s once again developed an instantaneous infatuation, this time with the photograph of Penny (Rachel Melvin), Harry’s daughter.

Dumb and Dumber To then begins to resemble the Dumb and Dumber of old. Again, the boys head out on the open road in pursuit of a girl that Lloyd is hot for, and again they find themselves obliviously embroiled in a criminal scheme, this time involving Adele Pichlow (Laurie Holden), the scheming wife of Penny’s adopted father, noted scientist Dr. Pichlow (Steve Tom). Upon learning that Penny has set off to a conference to accept an award on her father’s behalf, Harry and Lloyd are assigned the task of delivering a package to her to present to the science community, which Pichlow claims will greatly benefit mankind, thus placing this priceless commodity into the four worst hands conceivable. Adele, a gold-digger actively plotting her husband’s murder, enlists her secret lover Travis (Rob Riggle) to accompany the duo on their quest, the better to dispose of them and commandeer the package.

Yet, though Dumb and Dumber To works within the same basic template of the first film (Travis essentially fills the exact same role that Mike Starr did in the original), the film doesn’t go overboard on callbacks, a trap that comedy sequels constantly fall into. There are certainly some (Lloyd still has pitiful Binaca aim and introduces us to the SECOND most annoying sound in the world), but the sequel comes up with enough new material to avoid feeling like a cover version of something we’ve already seen. At times, it even attempts to subvert expectations toward sequel iconography, as with the hilarious handling of the Mutt Cutts van’s reemergence. It’s to the sequel’s immense credit that it finds a wealth of new moronic things for Harry and Lloyd to do and say instead of merely regurgitating the familiar.

The film also represents a return to form for the Farrelly Brothers, who haven’t made a movie this funny since their ‘90s heyday. After exploding out of the gate with the original Dumb, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary, the Farrellys have spent the 21st Century churning out a series of middling comedies, none of which did much to recapture the initial spark of that first trio of films. But there’s something about Harry and Lloyd that gets the brothers’ comedic juices flowing like wine. This film is a sequel and yet it feels far more comedically energized than any of the original films the Farrellys have made in the last 15 years.

The most remarkable aspect, however, is how easily Carrey and Daniels step back into these roles. There’s no rustiness whatsoever, in spite of the two-decade gap. This is all the more impressive since Daniels hasn’t really done much in the way of comedy since the first film, and now works on HBO’s ‘The Newsroom,’ which is about as far from Dumb and Dumber as you can get (though I’m told it’s both funny and dumb in its own ways). And though Carrey is still thought of as a comedic actor, the truth is that he’s gravitated away from material like this over the past decade, working on lower-key or higher-minded projects when he works at all. These two had every excuse in the world to be off their game, yet they slip right back into both their characters and their easygoing goofball chemistry like 1994 never ended. They’re ably abetted this time by Rachel Melvin as Penny, who puts an adorably ditzy spin on the characters’ unique brand of idiocy.

Dumb and Dumber To is the big surprise of the fall season. There was no reason to expect a comedy this strong after twenty years on ice. Carrey has been notoriously sequel-averse throughout his career ever since (and perhaps directly because of) ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls’ but ‘To’ works so well that one hopes we get to see Harry and Lloyd yet again somewhere down the road. Even if that road stretches all the way to 2034.