It has been a full 20 years since Peter and Bobby Farrelly first introduced us to the characters Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne in the outrageous 90s comedy Dumb and Dumber, and this year the dynamic duo is finally coming back to the big screen. But while the sequel, titled Dumb and Dumber To, won’t be out until the fall, earlier today we got our first ever peek at footage from the film at Universal Pictures’ presentation at CinemaCon. So what have the two best friends been up to in the last two decades? Read on to find out!
Beginning with what may very well be the first scenes of the movie, the Dumb and Dumber To reel began in a mental hospital where Harry (Jeff Daniels) has apparently been visiting Lloyd (Jim Carrey) for about 20 years. A pair of nurses talk about how sweet their relationship is, and we see Lloyd for the first time, now sporting a grizzly beard and basically catatonic in a wheelchair. Harry pleads for his friend to just say something… and it’s at that point that Lloyd looks up and says, "Got ya!" revealing that he has been faking his coma-esque state the whole time. After a funny sequence featuring Harry trying to remove Lloyd’s catheter all by himself (and then with the help of a few nearby gardeners and their flatbed truck), the best buds get out of the hospital and get ready to start their next adventure.
After a few non-sequitur scenes and funny moments, the plot was then established: Harry gets a letter in the mail from his former lover Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner) who tells him that she is pregnant with his child. The problem is that the letter is actually from 1991, meaning that Harry has an adult daughter he knows nothing about. They then go to visit Fraida to inquire about the kid (including whether the mom had a C-Section or went "Au Snatchural"), and discover that the child was actually put up for adoption, leading Harry and Lloyd on a new road trip to find the missing daughter.
In the final (and grossest) scene of the Dumb and Dumber To footage, the duo are in a nursing home visiting an old woman who Lloyd believes to be his grandmother. Told that she is lying on top of some "huge diamonds," Lloyd reaches under the blankets, but instead of finding precious jewels he instead accidentally starts "pleasuring" her (I’m trying to be as delicate as possible). It’s at this time that the woman decides to tell him that she is not actually his grandmother, and that he can, "Cross that one off your bucket list."
I’ve been vocal about my apprehension of this sequel, as the Farrelly brothers most recent run of films haven’t come close to reaching the level of their earlier work, but I must say that I am actually now somewhat looking forward to Dumb and Dumber To. The humor is certainly sophomoric, as you would expect, but it’s also so over the top that it got a few chuckles out of me. Most importantly, I was amazed by how quickly my brain adjusted to seeing Daniels and Carrey back together in character, and it was so fun to see the duo that after the footage I immediately found myself wanting more. I’m definitely still a bit wary of the project and not 100% confident that it will work, but my optimism level has gone up.
Dumb and Dumber To will be in theaters on November 14th.
