Cast: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Kathleen Turner, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin, Rob Riggle,Steve Tom, Bill Murray
Directors: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farelly
Remember the film Anaconda which bombed in the West and was a box office hit here? It only goes to show there’s no accounting for tastes and the appropriately named Dumb and Dumber might surprise us yet.
Arriving a full two decades after the Farrelly brothers’ debut instalment in 1994 (in which time Jim Carrey won accolades for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Jeff Daniels bagged an Emmy for The Newsroom) Dumb and Dumber To has Carrey and Daniels reprising their roles as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, the wannabe love interests of Freda Felcher played by Kathleen Turner and her daughter Penny (Rachel Melvin).
What the story (or its characters) display, as in the original buddy comedy film, is a singular lack of taste, discernment, sense and sensibility. Harry’s buddy cooks crystal meth and the dim-witted duo thinks its rock candy. But grace is in abundance as the two dopes hit the road looking for Harry’s offspring (the result of a fling with Freda) after Lloyd confesses his catatonic act had been a joke for 20 years.
Harry also has a vested interest in finding his daughter. He needs a kidney. The last time they were trying to return a lost briefcase, this time around, they are ferrying a scientific discovery to a conference where Harry’s long lost daughter is scheduled to make a presentation on behalf of her foster father, top scientist Dr. Pinchelow (Steve Tom). A sub plot involves the scientist, his wicked second wife (Laurie Holden) and her partner in crime Rob Riggle.
Focusing as usual on the moronic behaviour of its anti-heroes, the road trip is dotted with potty humour and politically incorrect ethnic, geriatric and sexual jokes which are not funny at all. Vulgar’s the word, actually. Mercifully, there are a couple of rib-ticklers: Like when Penny discloses she’d like to work as a volunteer in India’s “leprechaun colonies,” Lloyd corrects her saying, “I think you mean Ireland.”
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