Twenty years ago Roger Ebert wrote that a moment in Dumb and Dumber, “made me laugh so loudly I embarrassed myself.”
The movie, starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as the chicken-brained Lloyd and Harry, made 250 million dollars at the box office and seemed likely to spawn a sequel but nothing happened for almost twenty years. There was a prequel, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, but it was a Carrey-and-Daniel-less exercise in futility I called, “one of the least funny and ineptly made movies to ever play at your local multi-plex,” on its 2003 release.
So why did it take 19 years and 333 days to release a Dumb and Dumber follow-up? Carrey says he wasn’t into doing sequels but softened because everyone kept hounding him, he joked, “even dead people.”
Fans had to wait ages for Dumb and Dumber’s return, but two decades is a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the gap between the 1942 Disney classic Bambi and it’s sequel Bambi II. A ten-year-old who saw the original would have been old enough to send their grandkids to get popcorn refills when the sequel hit theatres overseas (it went direct to DVD in North America) almost sixty-four years later.
Thirty years after Alfred Hitchcock made seagulls menacing in The Birds a made-for television-movie called The Birds II: Land’s End revisited the killer avian story. Tippi Hedren, star of the original, signed on and it was shot in the house from the first film, but that’s where the similarities between the two end. The New York Times called the film “feeble,” and Hedren said, “It’s absolutely horrible, it embarrasses me horribly.”
29 years and 343 days after 1968’s The Odd Couple hit the big screen, writer Neil Simon and stars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau reunited for The Odd Couple II. “We always had bad chemistry,” says Oscar Madison (Matthau). “We mix like oil and frozen yogurt.” It marked the last starring roles for each of its leads and the final collaboration between Lemmon and Matthau after making ten movies together.
These days Hollywood seems obsessed with sequels and next year will be no different. Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Tom Hardy in the role that made Mel Gibson famous, returns thirty years after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Jurassic World revisits Jurassic Park III thirteen years later. The biggest sequel news of the year—maybe of the decade—is the December 2015 release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In the official Starr Wars chronology the new film follows 1983’s Return of the Jedi after a space of 32 years and 207 days.
Twenty years ago, in a simpler and sillier time, “Dumb and Dumber’s” Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) shrieked at Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey), “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this… and totally redeem yourself!”
It’s a line that echoes through the sequel, “Dumb and Dumber To.” Can the Farrelly Brothers find redemption after a string of flops by resurrecting their most famous characters and out dumb and out funny the modern sultans of silly, Seth McFarlane and Judd Apatow?
The new film begins in present day. Lloyd has spent two decades at a Baldy View Psychiatric Hospital, traumatized by the loss of his love Mary Swanson. Or is he traumatized? On one of his weekly visits Harry discovers Lloyd has been faking his comatose state for twenty years as a gag. “That’s awesome,” he says. “I feel for it hook, line and sphincter.” Reunited, they hit the road, this time in search of a daughter (Rachel Melvin) Harry never knew he had. She’s the “fruit of his loom” but could also be the kidney donor he needs to save his life.
The experience of watching “Dumb and Dumber To” is like spending the weekend with your hamster brained nephews. It’s super fun to see tem when they first arrive, but by Saturday night their antics have started to grow thin. By Sunday you’re wondering how you can miss them if they won’t go away.
Twenty years later Harry and Lloyd haven’t gotten any wiser but they haven’t gotten much funnier either. There are some astoundingly unPC gags—and I mean that literally—here, but none that reach the otherworldly vulgarity of the original’s laxative overdose scene. Instead it’s wall-to-wall jokes and one-liners, some hit, most don’t and nothing, save for the “Did you hide them in this turkey?” scene reach the level of McFarlane or Apatow outrageousness.
Carrey, however, is on overdrive. When he isn’t flailing about he’s mouthing malapropisms like, “That’s water under the fridge,” and what the material lacks in actual funny lines, Carrey makes up in sheer enthusiasm. For his part, Daniels leaves the dignity of “The Newsroom” behind, showing his behind more times than is comfortable for anyone.
“Dumb and Dumber To” is predictably silly, amiable stuff, which, I suppose, explains why it isn’t called “Dumb and Dumber Quantum Entanglement.”
The Lookout is the strangest crime drama to come along so far this year. At the beginning of the film Chris Pratt, played by former Third Rock from the Sun star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is the guy you love to hate—he has a rich father, a beautiful girlfriend, good-looking friends and a fast car. Life is perfect until he causes a car accident that claims his friends and leaves him with severe brain damage.
Years later Chris’ mangled mind leaves him confused and filled with anger. Simple tasks throw him and he longs for his past life, even though he can’t quite remember what it was like. Working as a night janitor at a local bank he muddles through his job with the aid of an ever-present notebook in which he makes the reminder notes that help him cope. When a charismatic former friend (Matthew Goode) maneuvers him into taking part in robbing the bank, Chris thinks he is taking steps toward controlling his life. He doesn’t realize he’s being manipulated until it is too late.
The shadow of Christopher Nolan’s Memento hangs heavy over The Lookout. The lack of short-term memory is a central plot device in both films. Memento’s hero using upside down tattoos and Polaroids to jog his memory while The Lookout uses a more practical, (although cinematically less exciting) solution: a notebook. The difference in the way the two characters jog their shattered memories is much like the difference between the movies. Memento is a much showier film. The Lookout is more low-key relying on the performances to propel the story rather than theatrics.
Gordon-Levitt has transformed from sit-com star to one of the best actors of his generation. Recent turns in Mysterious Skin and Brick show a young actor taking chances. In The Lookout, he goes further, deepening his work, creating a person whose character has been shattered. It’s a subtle, well-crafted performance that is always interesting.
Also interesting are Jeff Daniels as Chris’ out-spoken blind roommate, Isla Fissher as the moll with the unlikely name of Luvlee Lemons and British actor Matthew Goode as the charismatic baddie who lures Chris into hot water.
The Lookout isn’t, however, quite as good as the sum of its parts. The great acting and atmospheric cinematography aren’t enough to elevate a story that starts off promisingly but slowly works its way through to a hackneyed and labored ending.
The Squid and the Whale, a coming-of-age story about a teenager whose writer parents are divorcing, gets my vote for the most over-looked movie of 2005. Before the Oscar nominations were announced I thought that Jeff Daniels’ performance as the self-centered failure-of-a-father-figure was a lock for a Best Actor nod. Daniels is an actor who is so natural a performer that I think we often forget how good he is. I’d lump him in the same category with another Jeff—Jeff Bridges—who is also often overlooked.
The film is a semi-autobiographical story by former New Yorker writer Noah Baumbach and avoids the pitfalls that so many family dramas that deal with divorce fall into. It’s poignant, funny and in a movie filled with great performances and scenes one sequence stands out as one of the best not only from the movie, but one of the best of the year. There is a scene in a doorway between Daniels and his ex-wife, played by Laura Linney, where in just a couple of minutes we learn all we need to know about their relationship—the tenderness that once existed and the bitterness that now touches every moment of their lives.
The Squid and the Whale is one of the best movies of last year, and if you missed it at the theatre check it out on DVD.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
