I laughed a lot ... I face-palmed a lot more...

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2020)

At least the title is honest. "Dumb and Dumber" says what it says about the film, Harry (Jeff Daniels) and Lloyd (Jim Carrey) are grown-ups with the brains of sixth graders and are so incomparably stupid that there's no need to scratch your head to determine who's supposed to be dumber. Still, I'm partial to Harry being the lesser one because unlike Carrey, Daniels adds a subtle level of likability while Carrey is channelling the obnoxiousness of his Ace Ventura and the troll-attitude of the Mask. However, that Harry seems the most sensitive doesn't say much, he didn't invent hot water either.
What the title also indicates is that there's no need to look for a plot, just plug yourself in the mind of an immature teenager and let the magic of stupid laughs operate. It takes time until we're embarked in that cross-country road trip to Aspen, and their stupidity gets more tolerable. So we get the usual halts in shabby motels, gas stations, altercations with blasÃ© waitresses and hunky truck drivers, a stolen briefcase that reveals its secret at the right moment, later, we have a trip in one of Aspen's finest hotel, a dead owl, and one of the delights of the film is the way the bad guys (especially Mike Starr as Mental) believe they must be pros because no one can be that dumb.
What the Farrelly brothers do is take very familiar material and use it as a clothesline to hang on it the dumbest stuff they could find. It's not much a plot than a pot where every improvisation is thrown into, an excuse for the lamest possible gag, reminding you of that kid who went as far as asking the prettiest girl in class to pull his finger and make his buddies laugh (even if it meant losing any possible chance with girls). It takes some guts to be that dumb and an extra level to base an entire movie premise on two irremediably stupid characters but that was a risk the brothers (in their film debut) were willing to take.
Maybe it was a safe calculation after all, if you've got the best comedian of his generation who already proved to be bankable, how about letting him going in total control and see where it goes and if 60% of the gags must work, then throw as many gags as you can. They say quality matters more than quantity but not when you have that quantity : Harry and his mountain sheperd clad dog, Lloyd playing a lousy casanova as a limo driver, urinations on beer bottles, pranks involving mustard on burgers, fart jokes, toilet jokes, Bruce Lee imitations and so forth.
There are so also many moments of gratuitous and unbearable noises that I felt like Mental being trapped between Harry and Lloyd, and started wondering who was the bad guy. These moments, as funny as they were, made me genuinely appreciate the quieter parts where they seemed to pull themselves together and stop acting like prankish children. But these moments never lasted long and I think it's fair to say that there's not one minute going in the film without at least three gags and three stupid things done, and at the very least, you get a grimace from Carrey's rubber-made face.
But then again, Harry and Lloyd reach such heights of manic stupidity that I started to appreciate Jeff Daniels a little more not because I prefer him, but because Carrey is such an induspated talent who had nothing to prove after his "Mask" and "Ace Ventura" that it's a remarkable achievement to steal his thunder. Some of the funniest moments involve Daniels and I don't think he got the credit he deserves. And that might be the reason he tried to bring some sensitivity to the plot, as if it was the only way to compete with Carrey, being stupid in a touching way. And let's face it, the film is designed as a platform to let the machine Carrey go in total free style mode with as much imprvosation as he can afford but being touching wasn't his strongest suit, not yet, wait for "Liar, Liar" and "The Truman Show", for that.
Indeed, it was still 1994 and Carrey's acting needed more polishing or better scripts. The problem with the 'stupid' angle is that it's so overplayed that I found myself facepalming more than laughing, chuckling more than laughing and some bits are so hilarious that other appear as totally uninspired. I wasn't too sure that Lauren Holly needed her skirt to be lifted by Jim Carrey. I'm not sure that the second appearance of Sea Bass was the Karmic comeback we expected. I'm not sure the urination gag had the best outcome. And I think the ending with the top models left me cringing more than laughing. The film relied too much on Carrey being carried away and Daniels following him that it didn't suspect that a little less could have been a little more, that a few reliefs were needed and that some of the best gags didn't involve any of the dumb and the dumber one.
Ebert said he almost got hospitalized with the dead bird gag, I felt the same with the phone booth 'falcon' punch.