'Dumb & Dumber': A Look Back at 1994, Best Year EVAH!

I wasn’t too sure what to make of Jim Carrey, but with “Dumb & Dumber,” I decided that he was awesome. On Sunday nights in 1990, my college dorm TV lounge would be packed with students watching “In Living Color,” and I didn’t think Jim Carrey was even close to being the funniest thing on the show. It was obvious he would do anything for a laugh except turn himself down a notch.

While I found “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” to be quite funny, to me it worked because I never expected the character to actually be a good detective. In other words, Carrey’s stupid-funny antics worked because his character was actually stupid-smart. But it’s a sloppy movie, everyone else in the cast from Tone Loc to Courtney Cox stands around watching Carrey do his thing.

I initially liked “The Mask,” but remember a critic for my college newspaper opining that critics were too kind to the movie because they didn’t want to feel too out of touch with audiences. Looking back, I agree. It’s a slicker movie than “Ace Ventura,” but its stupid humor is forced and often aimed at five-year-olds.

“Dumb & Dumber,” however, is aimed solidly at a more mature demographic: twelve-year-olds. Announcing their presence with the authority of a Nuke LaLoosh fastball, The Farrelly Brothers unleashed their debut fart and burpfest onto the mildly suspecting public in December of 1994, solidifying Carrey’s launch to super-stardom. For the uncultured few who haven’t seen the film, Carrey plays Lloyd Christmas, who partners with his best friend Harry Dunne (the under-appreciated Jeff Daniels) to return a briefcase to Christmas’ dreamgirl in Aspen, CO. Hilarity in the form of pee and poop jokes and stupid sight gags ensues when they hit the road, unaware that the dreamgirl doesn’t want the case back – it contains ransom money meant to free her kidnapped husband.

The Farrelly’s were a perfect fit for Carrey: they too would do anything for a laugh. The stuff that works far outweighs the stuff that doesn’t, and there are jokes that work only because of the casting of Carrey and Daniels. Hell, there are lines that aren’t jokes that are somehow funny because of the casting of Carrey and Jeff Daniels. There’s a line in the first third of the film that sold me on Carrey’s comic brilliance – at least for a while. It’s not a punchline, it’s not a joke of any kind, but with these words…

“I like it a lot”

… Jim Carrey managed to elicit HUGE laughs from me and a theatre packed with twelve-year-olds. Somehow, this line kicked the movie into high gear for me, and for the next hour and some-odd minutes, I proceeded to embarrass my future wife nearly to death. For my money, Carrey’s never been better than in “Dumb and Dumber” at putting an exclamation point on laughs. The fantasy sequence where he imagines himself the life of the party, bringing erudite sweater wearing snobs to fits of laughter, is a case in point.

What I continue to love about the movie, despite its thin story and only moderately passable production values, is that Harry and Lloyd constantly surprise the audience with just how dumb they are. Pulling consistent laughs from such a flimsy conceit is more of an art than people realize. Their cluelessness and stupidity reveals itself in every gesture, every reaction. Right this second, I’d have to say my very favorite scene is when Harry falls victim to a mugful of laxative. Jeff Daniels takes an already funny scene to hilarious heights of hilarity with his body, ahem, language.

The Farrelly Brothers pushed the boundaries of the PG-13 rating with the under-performing and wildly underrated “Kingpin” two years later. Creatively, “Kingpin” is perfectly cast, but with “Dumb & Dumber,” they managed to surf on the wave of a star with two other hits in the same year. Not so with “Kingpin.” With “There’s Something About Mary,” they got dirtier and sweeter at the same time, resulting in a word of mouth monster hit that hung around the box office top five for several weeks before finally sneaking into the number one spot. “Dumb & Dumber” is not their best movie, but there’s an infectious, fun quality. You can almost feel their desperation to make you laugh and to make their mark.

Mission Accomplished.