Thursday, 18 December 2014

Dumb and Dumber To Review



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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