We don't fully understand why a dog yawns. Maybe it's in anticipation of something. Maybe it's nervousness. Maybe it's the same as in humans - a sign it's been too long since its last nap. Or maybe it's simply mimicking a behavior of its owner without the faintest clue why.
"Dumb And Dumber To" is a yawning dog of a movie. For a moment it can be diverting, maybe even entertaining. But then that moment passes and ultimately it's a behavioral oddity with no reason for existing other than fatigue, boredom, or blindly copying what's been done by others.
If nothing else, and this is no small feat, "Dumb And Dumber To" kills nostalgia. We casually enjoy Buzzfeed listicles (48 Things Only A 90s Kid Will Understand, etc) for the base, instant gratification of, "Hey, there's a thing I remember that other people remember too!" And if the listicle connects us to the positive feelings those things inspire, it's because we don't have to face they reality of them head-on, only the version in our minds. Hi-C Ecto Coolers likely tasted of cat urine, but I'll never remember for sure, and when I see pictures of them online, I smile.
Consider the cat urine flung in our faces. Now, today, one full score after the release of the 1994 classic (a word I use sincerely), we have this rehash, made for anyone who thinks Buzzfeed serves a legitimate journalistic purpose. Maybe it's not the movie they dreamed of, but when your eyes are on the rear view mirror, there are gonna be crashes.
Not to go so far to say this new movie is so bad it tarnishes our memory of the first one. That can't happen. We'll always have Aspen. It's that, despite the directorial return of the Farrelly brothers and Jim Carrey/Jeff Daniels giving it their all, "Dumb And Dumber To" appears clueless to what made the original special, leaving the taste of forced mediocrity in our mouths that's death to comedy.
Things start promisingly enough, as Harry (Daniels) visits Lloyd (Carrey) in the mental hospital he's apparently lived in the past 20 years, culminating in a funny, bold opening salvo that suggests the Farrellys showed up to play, ready to toss pesky things like logic and reason out the window.
Then the guys run into Billy, the blind kid from the original, and quietly sneak up to scare him. Then they push each other in the bushes solely to point and laugh. Then they scream, "Show us your tits!" at a woman speaking on stage.
Unfunny, yes, but more than that. There's an odd, rather uncomfortable meanness coursing through "Dumb And Dumber To" not present in the original. For all the gross-out labels slapped on the Farrelly brothers, one thing keeping their best work from tipping into unremarkable filth is their palpable fondness for their characters. The joke in "There's Something About Mary" wasn't that Ben Stiller caught his balls in the zipper - it's that he didn't deserve to get his balls in the zipper. The joke in "Dumb And Dumber" wasn't, "Aren't these guys pricks?" - it's that they're children dumped into the real world of adults, and the adults act accordingly.
You need that innocence in the main characters just as you need that realism to erect a wall and push back. Otherwise you just have unrepentant chaos. To put it a different way, Harry and Lloyd in the original movie could accidentally poison a guy with rat poison as a prank. Harry and Lloyd in this new movie would simply poison him because the bottle said "rat poison."
Let us count the ways "Dumb And Dumber To" coulda been different (and better). Maybe follow through on the promise of the opening scene and play it as absurdist farce with no connection to continuity, canon, or the world as we know it. Maybe take the lead of the uproarious gag involving the Mutts Cutts van and offer some kind of meta commentary on unnecessary sequels itself. Maybe, in the very least, force Harry and Lloyd to live as actual people in the current day instead of feeling perpetually stuck in 1994 (for all the flack thrown at "Anchorman 2," it pushed its characters to new, different terrain).
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