While Dumb and Dumber remains as one of the best cult comedies of the '90s, it's hard to imagine anyone seeing its recently released sequel, Dumb and Dumber To, in similar high regard. The second movie was a rather unfunny, unfortunate mess, and now its received the Honest Trailer treatment it so greatly deserves:
We've seen Honest Trailers in the past that are a bit more nitpicky than most, and ultimately admit that the movie in question is actually quite good... but this isn't one of those times. Though Dumb and Dumber To was ultimately considered a box office success - pulling in a global total of $169 million on a modest $40 million budget - I imagine one would be hard pressed to find a person that actually thinks its a worthy predecessor to the fantastically stupid original.
As the spot points out right from the start, Dumb and Dumber To essentially lacks any real kind of originality, as it's essentially just a slightly tweaked remake of the 1994 original: Harry (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd (Jim Carrey) wind up with a mysterious MacGuffin that they have to bring with them on a cross-country trip to visit a beautiful girl who Lloyd also happens to be in love with. There are some original bits, but by the end they are completely drowned out by what feel like forced references to the first film that only exacerbate the film's central issue.
Of course, repeating plot lines is a sin that we've seen repeated over and over again in the history of disappointing comedy sequels, but what's honestly surprising about Dumb and Dumber To is how tone deaf writer/directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly were in terms of bringing Harry and Lloyd back. In the original, the two idiotic characters are incredibly dumb, but there is also an inherent sweetness to them. As this Honest Trailer points out - and as I wrote in my review last year - that's really not the case in the sequel. Instead, Jim Carrey's Lloyd in particular is turned into a sexist, racist, selfish monster who actually goes to great lengths to completely screw over the only friend who has cared about him for years. It's most definitely not the Lloyd we remember, and one that we as fans really never wanted to see.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly have been watching their careers go downhill fast over the last decade or so, and while there was a part of me that really hoped a return to their roots with Dumb and Dumber To would right the ship (akin to what Tim Burton was able to do with Frankenweenie), that obviously didn't wind up being the case. Movies like There's Something About Mary, the original Dumb and Dumber, and Me, Myself and Irene show that the Farrellys do really have talent within them, but they haven't effectively showed it off in a long, long time.
Dumb and Dumber To is available on Blu-ray and DVD now.
