Dumb and Dumber To

Dumb and Dumber To (15)

USA 2014 109 mins  Dir: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly Starring: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin, Steve Tom, Kathleen Turner

Tempting though it is to deploy the film’s own bottom-fixated vernacular, it would be untrue to claim that this belated sequel totally sucks ass. But it does administer something of a comedy rim job. Twenty years ago, the Farrelly brothers’ original Dumb and Dumber steamrollered all but the most po-faced of critics into submission with its relentless, joyful stupidity. It also benefited from the funniest diarrhoea scene in movie history. A dismal prequel (Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) that nobody mentions anymore followed in 2003. Now the original team have reunited unexpectedly. Carpers were quick to object that middle-aged men (Jeff Daniels turns 60 in a couple of months) wallowing in adolescent idiocy would just be sad. This reviewer begs to differ. It has the potential to be twice as funny.

The real danger was that they’d do the lazy comedy sequel thing (The Hangover 2, Horrible Bosses 2, etc) by simply recycling gags from the first film, adding just the bare minimum of new ones to persuade us that we’re watching a different movie. And so it proves, with the Mutt Cutts van making a brief, contrived reappearance and the most annoying sound in the world now being supplemented by – oh dear – the second most annoying sound in the world.

Having spent 20 years feigning a coma, Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) emerges to deliver the punchline to a delighted Harry Dunne (Daniels), who celebrates – in the film’s most wince-inducing scene – by yanking out his old chum’s catheter. Turns out Harry needs an urgent kidney transplant, and that’ll mean visiting his estranged parents in search of a match. “You have to go home and face the music or suffocate in your own pee,” reasons Lloyd, helpfully. Trouble is, in a joke we first enjoyed 35 years ago in The Jerk, Harry’s parents are an Asian couple and he never realised he was adopted. Thanks to the magic of plot contrivance, it soon transpires that he sired a daughter with slatternly Fraida Felcher (a game Kathleen Turner). So the cretinous duo hit the road to track her down, in an adventure that gets them embroiled in a murder plot and sees Harry mistaken for a genius at the KEN conference (a TED conference reference for slumming intellectuals).

Carrey pulls lots of faces, seemingly at random, and delivers the occasional amusing malapropism, while Daniels throws off the shackles his recent serious role in The Newsroom with evident glee. But way too many gags fall flat or rely upon simple recognition of scenes from the first film. That said, at least this one isn’t as bad as the Farrellys’ nadir, The Three Stooges. And you may find yourself itching to play Funnel Nuts with anyone who hasn’t seen it.