Review of
Dumb and Dumber
Reviewed by Elbert Ventura
Director: Peter Farrelly
Starring: Jim Carrey,Jeff Daniels,Lauren Holly,Karen Duffy,Teri Garr
I love Dumb and Dumber. I confess, I saw it when it first came out.
Three times. In the span of a week. In the theater. I, a guy who professes to
disdain Hollywood tripe and love the edgy indie and European esoterica, have
seen it numerous times since then-I think I'll just say it's in the double
digits and leave it at that. I have lost friends because of my fondness for this
movie. Who needs them anyway? Any enemy of a great fart joke is no friend of
mine.
Dumb and Dumber was the third movie of the three-pronged Jim Carrey
assault of 1994. One minute, Jim was barely a celebrity. The next minute, he's
in a string of hits, on his way to becoming one of Hollywood's highest paid
stars. Dumb and Dumber, the funniest of Carrey's movies from 1994 (Ace
Ventura and The Mask were the other two), cemented his status as
America's leading comic actor. It also, unbeknowest to us back then, introduced
to the world the comic genius of the Farrelly brothers. Not until their third
movie, There's Something About Mary, did they become a household name.
That's the way it is with geniuses-they have to wait for the rest of us to catch
up with them.
Now, when I say genius, I am obviously not talking about intellect. Carrey and
the Farrelly's are probably fairly intelligent people, but I doubt they're Nobel
Prize material. When I say genius, as it applies to comedy, I mean the uncanny
ability to just drum up stuff that'll absolutely paralyze you with laughter.
Carrey, with his rubber face and utter desperation to try and make you laugh,
has that genius. The Farrelly's, they of the scrotum-caught-in-zipper gags and
diarrhea-and-dildo sensibility, have it as well. They do things that make
actually make you go, "Where do they come up with this?"
Dumb and Dumber is a splendid a showcase for their respective talents.
From Carrey's relentless mugging and god-awful bowl haircut, to the sick
pleasure-operative word, sick-of seeing Jeff Daniels let loose a torrent of
diarrhea in the bathroom of his date's house, the movie just packs laugh after
laugh. It isn't the world's best made movie, but then again, it doesn't have to
be. You don't see Dumb and Dumber for "cinema." You see this
movie because you want to see funny shit, no pun intended.
As in any Farrelly brothers movie, the plot is pretty silly. It's about Carrey
and Daniels trying to find this girl Mary (something about that name for the
Farrelly's, eh?) to give her back a briefcase that some mobsters also want. See,
plot to the Farrelly's is this thing that strings together money scenes. It's
almost like watching an action movie, except instead of big, fat action scenes,
we get comic set pieces. That's what you remember from Farrelly brothers movies:
scenes that absolutely kill, like a nervous prom date accidentally zipping up
his weiner, or a man trying to resuscitate a comatose dog.
Dumb and Dumber is filled with such sequences. Frequently tasteless,
always shameless, Dumb and Dumber is not a movie for genteel tastes. For the
rest of you with no sticks up your ass, enjoy.
