DIRECTOR
Peter Farrelly
SCREENWRITERS
Peter
Farrelly
Bennett Yellin
Bobby Farrelly
PRODUCERS
Brad Krevoy
Steven Stabler
Charles B. Wessler
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Mark Irwin
MUSIC
Todd Rundgren
EDITOR
Christopher Greenbury
CAST
Jim Carrey (Lloyd Christmas)
Jeff Daniels (Harry Dunne)
Lauren Holly (Mary Swanson)
Mike Starr (Mental)
Charles Rocket (Nick)
Karen Duffy (J.P. Shay)
Cam Neely (Sea Bass)
Harland Williams (State Trooper)
Felton Perry (Detective Dale)
Teri Garr (Helen Swanson)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 101m
U.S. release: December 16, 1994
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Farrelly
Bros. movies
reviewed on this website:
- Kingpin
- Me,
Myself & Irene
- Outside
Providence
- There's
Something About Mary
|
That
sound you hear across America is the collective brows of movie
critics crinkling in dismay over the whirlwind success of Jim
Carrey, the golden idiot of the moment. It was safe for critics
to praise his previous hit, The Mask, because of its special-effects
homage to Tex Avery; otherwise, Carrey is still considered a
baffling anomaly. I hated Carrey in Ace Ventura -- he
was just too relentlessly "on" -- but there's no doubt
that he can be ecstatically funny. In Dumb and Dumber,
his new showcase, Carrey appears in a ridiculous orange tux and
does a brisk, happy jig that recalls Steve Martin before he calcified
into father-of-the-bridehood; it's a vintage bit of physical
buffoonery. Carrey surprised a laugh out of me at least once
every reel. He doesn't yet have the absurdist vibe that sent
Martin into Looney-Tunes heaven in The Man with Two Brains,
but give him time (and the right script). As his partner in dumbness,
Jeff Daniels makes a game attempt at slob humor; he really tries.
But his performance is like a New Year's resolution to loosen
up -- there's no real madness in anything he does. Daniels does
have one tenderly loco moment, when he's so enthralled by an
attractive woman he's talking to that he doesn't notice his leg
has caught fire. Otherwise, it's completely Carrey's show.
Dumb and Dumber isn't nonstop hilarity; there are quite
a few dead spots. But I liked it a lot. In its amiable narrative
shabbiness, it reminded me of two other comedies I remember fondly
even though they only made me really laugh two or three times
each: The Jerk, with its blend of slapstick and surreal
you-can't-tell-why-you're-laughing moments ("The phone books
are here!"), and the 1982 Cheech and Chong vehicle Things
Are Tough All Over, whose plot -- a large amount of cash
drops into the laps of two dimwits -- is similar to Dumb and
Dumber's. The director, Peter Farrelly, who also wrote the
script with his brother Bobby and Bennett Yellin (and who wrote
the autobiographical novel Outside
Providence), sometimes opts for cruel humor: The boys
make fast bread by selling their headless parakeet to a blind
boy; a bad guy on their trail (the ubiquitous Mike Starr of Mad
Dog and Glory, Trial by Jury, Cabin Boy, and
Ed
Wood) overdoses on chili peppers and mistakenly pops
rat poison instead of his ulcer pills. I didn't get the men's-room
gag with the truck-stop bully -- it's either homophobic or pointless
-- and Teri Garr doesn't add much to her two scenes. Still, there's
always something strange or laughable every few minutes, including
the very idea of Karen Duffy as a hit woman.
Pundits have speculated about the enormous success of Carrey
and Dumb and Dumber (not to mention Forrest
Gump), issuing somber pronouncements about the dumbing-down
of America. Newt Gingrich and his pit bulls have their sights
trained on PBS, and high-school grads are dumber every year.
It's probably the ideal time to go watch Jim Carrey be a moron:
At least we're not that bad yet. |
