Photo by Hopper Stone.
It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Farrelly brothers introduced us to a couple of idiots named Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas with Dumb and Dumber, a movie that spawned much more slapstick silliness in movies like Kingpin, There’s Something About Mary, Shallow Hal and The Three Stooges. While people usually change quite a bit over the course of 20 years, such is not the case with Harry and Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber To.
Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey reprise their respective roles and unwittingly stumble into a road trip not unlike the one from the first film as Harry learns that he and Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner) have a long-lost daughter. After Harry tells Lloyd that he needs a kidney transplant, the two decide to track down this daughter, who has been raised by Dr. Pichlow (Steve Tom), a famous scientist whose poor health is preventing him from delivering a package containing a billion-dollar discovery to a big science conference. So Harry and Lloyd set out to find Penny Pichlow (Rachel Melvin) and to deliver this world-changing package in a hearse borrowed from the nursing home where Fraida works, with Lloyd having ulterior motives after seeing how beautiful Penny is.
Photo by Hopper Stone.
There’s no doubt that Penny is Harry’s daughter, given her absentmindedness, simplemindedness and general lack of sense of any kind. Between her preparing to give a speech at the conference in her father’s absence (while unwittingly arousing every nerd she encounters), Harry trying to get the package to Penny (while unwittingly being mistaken for Dr. Pichlow by conference organizers), Lloyd trying to secretly meet Penny so he can propose to her, and Dr. Pichlow’s wife (Laurie Holden) and her secret lover (Rob Riggle) being unwittingly foiled in their attempts to steal the package from Harry and Lloyd, theres a lot of bumbling going on. Much like the plot, many of the same jokes are recycled in Dumb and Dumber To. That’s usually good enough for a hearty chuckle or more, but sometimes it falls a little flat.
Despite it’s shortcomings, I’m not going to say I hate Dumb and Dumber To. But I’m also not going to say I love it. I will admit that I like it. In fact, I might even say I like it a lot.