Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

Dumb and Dumber is high on my list of favorite comedies. The story about the two “stupid” friends Harold (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd (Jim Carrey) who want to return a briefcase to its owner and end up in a kidnapping case was comedy gold. The movie still is endlessly quotable and even is you have seen the movie before, it remains funny. This sequel, or actually third movie as we can’t forget the horrible Dumb and Dumberer, tries to recreate the magic of the original. The actors are 20 years older, but are they still able to convincingly crawl into the skin of these iconic characters?

Initially it is nice to see them back. They immediately do the stupid things you’d expect from them, but it doesn’t take long before the references to the first movie start to feel too forced. An example of this is the blind boy from the first movie, who still lives in the same apartment building and now has a whole collection of birds. When the movie again makes a joke (basically the same one) with him it doesn’t hit its target. The original was so great because it had so many unexpected moments that surprised you and here that doesn’t happen often enough.

That doesn’t mean however that the movie doesn’t have funny jokes. There were enough moments which did make me laugh, but not as much as I had expected. Maybe it is because the original was so good that my expectations were too high, but then again there are plenty of sequels which rise above those and this isn’t one of them. Should this movie have been made? There was an audience for it, so the decision to do it is understandable, but if you are not able to reach the high level of the original it is hard to answer it with a resounding yes.