When Is It Too Late For A Movie Sequel?

Dumb And Dumber To (2014)

Dumb And Dumber burst into life in 1994 and helped to make a name for comedy filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly. It told the story of best friends Lloyd Christmas (a limo driver, played by Jim Carrey), and Harry Dunne (a pet groomer, played by Jeff Daniels), who inadvertently become embroiled in the efforts of Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) to retrieve her husband from kidnappers. Harry and Lloyd are depicted as being below average intelligence and their involvement with Mary leads to a comic cross-country caper.

Dumb And Dumber is the kind of movie that is mildly amusing in parts and can be used to pass the time if you stumble upon it while channel surfing late at night, during a bout of insomnia. It was somewhat mystifying, then, to learn that the Farrelly Brothers would be resurrecting Lloyd and Harry for a sequel twenty years later.

The original movie really hinged upon the unlikely double-act of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in the lead roles and, to be fair, this is where most of the mildly amusing moments in that film come from. Carrey is the consummate comedy performer, and Daniels reveals himself to have a relatively good sense of comic timing. The sequel, Dumb And Dumber To, hinges upon the same, but uses the two decade time gap to its advantage.

The story once again takes the two friends on the road, but this time, their goal is to track down the daughter Harry only just learned he has. It transpires that she was adopted as an infant and never had the opportunity to meet her father. In essence, the film does take the most successful elements of the original movie and build a new plot around them. But the result never elevates itself above the mildly amusing status of the original.