Movie Review: DUMB & DUMBER TO Cashes In On Nostalgia, But Offers Little More.

Dumb and Dumber To

Directors: Bobby & Peter Farrelly
Cast: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin, and Kathleen Turner.
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, partial nudity, language, and some drug references.

Well, whether you wanted it or not, the sequel to the king of 90s comedies has finally come to theaters twenty years later. I think we (and by "we" I mean fans of the original) all can agree that this installment would not live up to its predecessor, but I was at least hoping that it would still be funny without tarnishing its own legacy. And I'm here to report that Dumb and Dumber To falls somewhere in between.


Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Daniels) reunite after being apart from each other for twenty years. Harry has just learned that he fathered a daughter in the early 90s and sets off with Lloyd to find her in the hope of connecting with his child. Oh, and asking her if she'd be willing to donate a kidney for a transplant that Harry desperately needs.

In all honesty, this is a movie where the plot doesn't matter. It didn't matter in the first film, and it certainly doesn't matter here. All we want is to see what these two dimwits will do while on screen. The good news is that Carrey and Daniels fall right back into their roles and it's as if the past twenty years never happened. Sadly, that's really the only good news. Despite their great chemistry, the film just tries way too hard to recapture the magic of the first film.

The Farrelly brothers, who co-wrote and directed both films, are so concerned with making every line of dialogue funny that most of it falls flat. Some of it is just flat out gross. Though Dumb & Dumber had a couple crude jokes, the genius of the comedy came from Lloyd and Harry just being idiots. Here, they are just trying to get too many laughs out of gross, crude, and sometimes dark humor. There are some genuinely funny moments that did make me laugh, but honestly I don't think I need to see it again. The good news is we still have the first film, and it's currently on Netflix. Might be time to queue it up.

RATING: C+