In the 20 years since the first film, Lloyd has been playing
the most epic of pranks on Harry, his partner in dumb. Since the end of Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd has been trapped
comatose in a wheelchair while Harry has patiently come to see him, changed his
diapers and waited for him to snap out of it. As Dumb and Dumber To begins, Lloyd delivers the mother of
all ‘Gotchas’ as Lloyd reveals he has been faking... for 20 years! It’s an amusing start to a
film that can now get away with telling a story 20 years on where neither of
the characters has done anything of interest in the interim. It’s like
returning directors the Farrelly brothers have dangled their rods, hooked us in
the mouths and shouted a big fat ‘Gotcha’ of their own.
Harry needs a kidney from a family member so after realising
that his Chinese parents are actually his adopted parents, he receives the
news that he also now has a grown up daughter, Penny. Harry sets off to find this
daughter with Lloyd in tow, not completely out of friendship but more because Lloyd
thinks the girl is hot. So begins another cross country road trip as the pair
try to reach a KEN conference that Penny is speaking at. She was also
adopted and is now being entrusted with delivering a speech on behalf of her adopted
professor father.
Much like the last film, there are baddies in tow who want
something that the dumbass pair have got hold of, so the story is very similar. Not only
that, but we also pop in on the blind kid next door, have recycled jokes
straight out of the first film and almost exactly the opposite of anything you
would call character development. Lloyd in particular comes across as a crass,
selfish prick with even the likeable Jim Carrey unable to save him from being a
bit of a monster in this sequel.
There are some funny moments but these are few and far
between and rely on some pretty poor humour. Like the recent Horrible Bosses 2,
many of the jokes are racist and sexist with the only thing making them
palatable being the fact that the white guys at the centre are so stupid that
they are the real butt of all the jokes. Unfortunately Dumb and Dumber To has
little of the heart of its predecessor and even invites comparisons by including
clips from the first film in the end credits.
While Carrey and Daniels work typically hard for their
laughs, the main problem with Dumb and Dumber To is that despite a few good
gags, the story is stale and the script fails to keep the laughs coming. It’s
not atrocious, but it is a lazy and almost entirely unnecessary sequel. Do yourself a favour and just watch the trailer for the best bits:
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