Monday 19 January 2015

Dumb and Dumber To (2014)






















Is it just me or does this whole production reek of desperation? Again is it just me or does it seem like the once titanic Jim Carrey is slightly hard up for some hot publicity and attention, so he has agreed to drag this old comedy up from the depths to try and get back into the limelight somewhat. I'm sure I once recall him saying he would never do sequels or something like that, but that was back when he was bigger than Hollywood itself. I mean I'm sure he's not short on change but this really feels like two actors (and maybe directors) clawing and clambering to get back into the public eye...and have a hit.

The movie starts off with the lamest gag, seriously its so stupid its not even funny, it just defies all sense of realism. Yes I know the film is based on these two morons and things like this are suppose to be plausible but really? In short Lloyd was so heartbroken about losing Mary (from the first movie) that he fell into a vegetable-like state and was stuffed in a mental hospital where he stayed for...wait for it...twenty years. When the movie kicks off with Harry visiting him we eventually discover that apparently Lloyd has been faking his break down for the last twenty years for a joke. So we are meant to believe that for the last twenty years Lloyd has been living in a mental hospital being treated like a real patient...purely for a joke...ha-ha-ha...no.

So once that ridiculous idea has past the rest of this pointless endeavour continues. By that I mean Harry needs a new kidney so he must find a relation to give him one. One thing leads to another and the duo discover Harry has a daughter so off they go on another road trip to find her. The snag in this sequel being the woman who adopted Harry's daughter is an unscrupulous money grabber who's after her husbands money and ingenious invention. She and her accomplice won't let anything stand in their way of getting the inheritance by killing off her husband.

So that's the plot, now fill in the rest of the run time with lots of rehashed visual gags and jokes that we saw in the original movie. No I'm not joking, most everything the idiotic pair do and say in this movie have been regurgitated from the first movie. We see their old shaggy dog van again albeit briefly, the old music track 'Too Much of a Good Thing' by The Sons suddenly cranks up and for a split second I got excited even though this was clear rehasharama fodder. Unfortunately this joy is short lived but I guess had it gone on then the rehash scale would be blowing its wad. Fear not the duo manage to drive another hilariously unroadworthy vehicle instead just in case you missed that from the last movie. Along with that most of the dialog and verbal gags have been reused...and I mean all of them from 'suck me sideways' to 'I like it a lot', hell they even go past one of the old locations seen in the first film.






















I guess what's really unsettling about this fiasco is the fact that Carrey's portrayal of Lloyd is so...psychotic. In the first film the pair were a lovable innocent bumbling duo of simpletons. This time around Harry is still on par but Lloyd comes across like a sheer lunatic who swings from acts of soft core violence to having bouts of tourette's and hysteria. You never know what he's gonna say or do, half the time you feel like you're watching The Riddler again. To me it really felt like the Farrelly brothers were really struggling to come up with things for these guys to do. Watching Carrey make the same faces or watching him eat an entire hotdog in one go (and various other foods in silly ways) just seems rather lacking to me.

To add insult to injury the soundtrack for this movie was also pretty awful really, clearly trying to copy/equal the original movie in every way possible but failing. From the visual gags with the blind birdman at the start (a grown up Billy), to the practical goofs on the guy trying to kill them, to the ending where the duo are yet again held up at gun point on the brink of being killed. This sequel is basically exactly the same shit as the original, its your standard modern day rehash which we are seeing time and time again.

To make things even worse the final twist in the tale at the end actually does prove how utterly pointless this entire ordeal was. Its suppose to be funny but it just left me thinking how totally senseless, aimless and purposeless this movie is. It also speaks volumes to me that the end credits are mixed with little funny segments from this sequel and the original. Its pretty clear to me nobody was exactly fully confident about this movie hence the need to fall back on the first so much. They couldn't even let the old character of Sea Bass go. Had to crowbar him back in there for good measure along with his buddy and that now infamous line 'kick his ass Sea Bass!', because seeing the exact same shit again twenty years later is comedic genius.

3/10

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