“Dumb and Dumber To” is a 2014 comedy that tries to recapture the magic of the 1994 original by putting Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne back on the road. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels return as the dim-witted duo, and the film sends them across the country to find Harry’s long-lost daughter, Fanny, who was given up for adoption. The setup is simple. The execution is not.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Lloyd’s Return From the Asylum
The film opens with Lloyd committed to a mental institution for 20 years, still catatonic after discovering that Mary Swanson was already married at the end of the first film. His best friend Harry visits and pleads with him to snap out of it. Lloyd fakes his condition the whole time, and the revelation sets the plot in motion. Harry needs a kidney transplant and discovers he cannot get one from his parents because he was adopted as a baby. That discovery leads him to Fraida Felcher, his ex-girlfriend, who reveals she had a daughter named Fanny, whom she gave up for adoption.
Lloyd and Harry drive to Oxford, Maryland, to find Fanny, now grown up and living under the name Penny. Penny is headed to a KEN Convention in El Paso, Texas, where she is scheduled to speak about her father’s life work. The plot thickens when Dr. Bernard Pinchelow, Penny’s adoptive father, realizes she has forgotten a package that he says contains an invention worth billions. Adele Pinchelow, Dr. Pinchelow’s wife, secretly plans to poison him to inherit his fortune, with the help of her lover and the family’s housekeeper, Travis Lippincott.
Travis, a twin brother to a Black Ops specialist supplying poisons, joins Lloyd and Harry on the road, hoping to steal the package for himself and Adele. The chase is the engine of the film, but the comedy built around it rarely lands.
The Chase Across America
The road trip is the film’s central idea, and it has the makings of a great comedy. Lloyd and Harry are as mismatched as ever, and their dim-witted schemes should be the movie’s strength. Instead, the jokes fall flat more often than they hit. The script, co-written by Bennett Yellin, Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, John Morris, Sean Anders, and Mike Cerrone, leans on physical humor and crude gags that feel tired rather than clever. The film’s tagline promises that the average person uses 10% of their brain capacity and asks what he could do with 1%. The answer here is not much.
Carrey and Daniels play their characters with the same broad energy they brought to the first film, but the material does not give them anywhere to go. Lloyd’s fantasies, featuring a ninja leader and a fantasy wife for Harry, are meant to be silly, but they undercut the drama rather than add to it. The film’s tone shifts awkwardly between broad comedy and attempted tension, and neither holds.
“Imagine what he could do with 1%.”
A Turbulent Road to Release
The film’s production history is as rocky as its reception. First announced in October 2011, the project faced a turbulent pre-production phase, including a moment when Carrey withdrew from the project and Warner Bros. Pictures exited entirely. Warner Bros.’ New Line Cinema division received an “in association with” credit for their participation stake. The project was eventually taken on in 2013 by Red Granite Pictures, which shot the film later that year.
Released on November 14, 2014, by Universal Pictures, “Dumb and Dumber To” grossed $36.1 million on its opening weekend and over $169 million worldwide. Those numbers look respectable on paper, but the film’s reputation suffered badly. Critics were unkind, and the film’s place in the franchise remains a question mark.
A Missed Opportunity
The film’s failure is not a mystery. It is a failure of ambition. The Farrelly brothers directed and co-wrote the film, and they had the chance to do something bold with Lloyd and Harry’s reunion. Instead, they made a sequel that feels like it was built to order, with jokes that are obvious and a story that is thin. The supporting cast, including Laurie Holden as Adele, Paul Blackthorne as the emergency room doctor, and Rob Riggle as Travis Lippincott, is game, but they are asked to carry a script that does not give them much to work with.
The film’s biggest problem is that it does not know what kind of movie it wants to be. It wants to be a road comedy, a thriller, and a reunion film all at once. It succeeds at none of them. The chase scenes are dull, the jokes are stale, and the emotional beats about Harry’s need for a kidney and Lloyd’s devotion to his friend feel hollow next to the pratfalls that fill the rest of the runtime.
The Verdict
“Dumb and Dumber To” is a disappointment. It is a film that coasted on the goodwill of its predecessor and failed to earn its own place in the canon. The jokes are tired, the plot is thin, and the chemistry between Carrey and Daniels is not enough to save it. This is a sequel that should have been better.
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