Dumb and Dumber [1994]

April 11, 2024

I know and I really don’t care. I know that you know all about this movie and that you’ve probably seen it a thousand times before. However, I simply have to include it in my collection of movie recommendations. Mostly because this is my favorite comedy. I’ve seen it at least fifty times and each time I had a blast. Dumb and Dumber is an intensely charming non-stop laughs comedy about two losers chasing their dreams. It’s a movie about friendship, love, and, oddly enough, morality. I won’t bother you too much with it. I just wanted to share my impressions and look back at one of the most influential comedies of the nineties.

First of all, can you imagine a comedy this silly being released today, in the year of our lord Cthulhu 2024? The studios are looking for a different breed of comedy now. However, I have to admit that No Hard Feelings showed that there’s still hope for this type of comedy. 1994 was the year of Jim Carrey. He had no less than three hits on his hands. The Mask, Ace Ventura, and Dumb and Dumber propelled him to the stars in an instant. He continued to dominate the comedy genre for the next two decades and he’s still going strong. It’s funny to note that two out of these three movies were debut features for directors.

Yes, it’s true, Dumb and Dumber is Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s first feature movie. They went on to make several hilarious comedies like Kingpin, There’s Something About Mary, and Me, Myself & Irene. Enough of all of that, I want to talk about the movie at hand. Dumb and Dumber is a movie about two naive and well-meaning guys who just can’t cut it in this ruthless world. The twist is that they haven’t lost their “adult” urges. I mean, the movie opens with our hero Lloyd, a limo driver, pretending to be a professor to get a girl to go with him. As it usually happens with these masterpieces, an excellent script and an even better direction are accompanied by stellar performances.

And boy do we have two stellar performances here. Jim Carrey was perfect for the role of Lloyd but Jeff Daniels took me by surprise. He was already a somewhat established actor playing serious roles. This is the reason why his agents tried to convince him to drop the role. And the studios also didn’t have much faith in him. So much so that they didn’t film any scenes with him during the first two weeks. They wanted to see how he’s going to fit in and if there’s any chemistry between him and Carrey. Of course, as soon as they saw the dailies, everything fell into place. Carrey says that he needed a “real actor” to ground him and his performance. And he was the driving force behind this movie.

If you’ve seen this movie, you probably remember all the main jokes but there are so many smaller ones that you might’ve missed, that you ought to watch it again. Almost every scene features one of them. Jim Carrey sprays the mouth spray in the wrong direction before asking a girl, who’s he driving to the airport, why’s she going there. I mean, stuff like this will get you. And you’ll soon have your favorite scenes and jokes. The pacing is absolutely phenomenal and it will give you just enough time to recover from the last scene and prepare for the next one. And sometimes you’ll be laughing so hard that you won’t have any time to breathe.

I’ve seen this movie when I was 15 years old and I watched it last night, as a misanthropic 40-year-old and I still laughed my ass off. What can I say, I simply love this movie. Dumb and Dumber is the movie that inspired the now-famous Subversive Rabbit’s perfect comedy test. If a comedy has a shitting scene, it can be considered for the selection. And oh boy, do we have a shitting scene here or what! It’s side-splittingly hilarious and Jeff Daniels should’ve won an Oscar for it. Actually, each time I found myself in a similar situation, I felt just a little bit better if I remembered it. Moreover, Clint Eastwood said to Jeff that he was in exactly the same situation during one faithful date.

Never before or after have I seen a movie firing so many jokes that work so well. A movie that’s not a parody, just to be clear. You might argue that Airplane! or The Naked Gun are just as funny and I do agree with that but those are parodies. Dumb and Dumber has a real story, a story about two friends who are struggling to make a living, just like you and me. They’re not some rich assholes although they will end up in a rich asshole’s place. This twist kind of reminds me of another comedy, the eighties classic Weekend at Bernie’s. And both of these movies are rated PG-13 despite quite raunchy and edgy jokes.

I’ll remind you that Lloyd pulls a man’s beating heart with his bare hands, bags it, and gives it back to the poor sucker. Not to mention the brief nudity when he looks under Mary’s skirt. The 15-year-old me remembers that scene very well. I know I’ve said that I’ll keep this short and sweet but I simply couldn’t help myself. Dumb and Dumber is an adventure that’s going to put you in a good mood no matter what is happening in your life. So, just keep it handy and you’ll find the right time to play it. Perhaps you’ll get your hands on some of that sticky icky and decide you want to watch something that’s going to completely consume and entertain you for the next almost two hours.