Movie Review: 'Dumb and Dumber To' Starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels

Starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels

PG-13

Two-and-a-half out of five stars

Humor is subjective, and I strongly subject to Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s "Dumb and Dumber To." (Thanks for allowing my small tribute to the movie’s fondness for malapropisms.)

The plot: for 20 years, Harry (Jeff Daniels) has been visiting Lloyd (Jim Carrey) every week in a nursing home, where Lloyd has been in a catatonic state since the first movie. Right away, we’re treated to the first two Farrelly Brothers’ trademark gross-out visual gags, both of which involve Lloyd’s bladder catheter, and its forced removal. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know Lloyd’s catatonia was only a two-decade-long joke he played on Harry, which Harry found “awesome!”

Harry needs a kidney but can’t find a donor. He turns to his Asian parents for help but is crestfallen when they inform him he was adopted -- a telegraphed joke, but funny nonetheless. Instead, his father gives Harry a box of his old mail, which includes a postcard from Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner), informing Harry she’s pregnant. The postcard was sent more than 20 years ago which, Lloyd deduces, means Harry has an adult child who probably has a kidney to donate.

Turns out Harry has a daughter, named Penny (Rachel Melvin), and when Fraida shows Harry and Lloyd a picture of her, Lloyd falls in love -- which will, of course, cause tension between our two favorite idiots. Fraida also informs them that she gave Penny up for adoption. So off go Harry and Lloyd to track down Penny, while avoiding a diabolical plan by Penny’s stepmother, Adele (Laurie Holden) and her lover (Rob Riggle) to kill Penny’s father, a rich scientist, and inherit his fortune.

This is where I tell you how much I liked "Dumb and Dumber," how I consider "There’s Something About Mary" a classic, and how "Kingpin" is one of my all-time favorite comedies. I like the Farrelly Brothers. That said, this is also where I tell you I didn’t laugh out loud once while watching "Dumb and Dumber To." I giggled quietly and smiled a lot, but not one visceral, honest-to-goodness, uncontrollable laugh.

Seeing Harry and Lloyd, 20 years later, is on the one hand nostalgic and comfortable, but it also at times feels desperate, which is in turn awkward and uncomfortable. Even so, the years haven’t diminished Carey and Daniels’ ability to play these characters. It has, however, diminished the Farrellys’ ability to be original. They’re victims of their own amazing and hilarious success, and "Dumb and Dumber To" feels like they’re trying too (to?) hard to recapture the magical, winning formula of their early films.

In the end, "Dumb and Dumber To" is like a mildly amusing, 50-year-old guy in a bar, dressed like a hipster, awkwardly hitting on 21-year-old girls: it’s kind of funny, but it’s also kind of depressing.