"Dumb and Dumber" is funny and funnier. It's even funniest, as in "funniest movie of the year."
But the best thing about it is the refusal to romanticize its idiotic heroes, Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunn (Jeff Daniels). It grants them no conditional grace, no last-second reprieve from the consequences of their mega stupidity; it portrays them, at the fullest extension of their disconnection from the way the world actually operates, as truly irritating.
Here's the premise of the movie: These two guys are really stupid. Amazing how facile a concept this proves to be, particularly as it animates a plot that could have been thought up by either of them.
In Providence, R.I., Lloyd and Harry keep losing jobs. No wonder: They're morons. They just don't get this cause-effect deal. They don't get that what goes up must come down. They think it will stay up, always, and when it comes down, boy, are they surprised. And the one about 2 plus 2 coming out as 4? News to them.
Lloyd, the world's worst limo driver, drives beautiful Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) to the airport, then notices (as he iscracking up after dropping her) that she's left a briefcase in the terminal. He swoops it up himself, but, not reaching her before she boards her plane, he decides to . . . drive to Aspen, Colo., to deliver it to her himself.
This makes perfect sense by the rules of Lloyd-logic, and of course Harry-logic reaches a similar conclusion, and off they go. Both are, naturally, unaware that the briefcase contains ransom on behalf of Swanson's kidnapped husband, and that both cops and kidnappers will set off on their tail.
That's basically the movie: Lloyd and buddy Harry on the way to Colorado, deconstructing the physical universe as they go along in their cocoon of sloppy ignorance and clumsiness and petty, stupid gamesmanship. Their favorite game is called "You're it" and it goes like this: "You're it!" "Now, you're it!" "OK, but now you're it!" and on and on. They survive only by some function of the rule that God is kind to idiots. (He must like them, or else why would he have made so many?)
Since their mental age is 16 (that is, in total; divide it by two for each character's mental age) there's also plenty of room for the kinds of jokes that 8-year-old boys especially enjoy, if you know what I mean and I think you do. (Does the word "bathroom" mean anything to you?)
But the movie isn't just one potty joke after another. It's astutely constructed, for example, in the way it differentiates between Lloyd and Harry. Like Laurel and Hardy, they're not stupid in exactly the same way. Each has a carefully shaped and exceedingly grating personality, full of truly annoying tics.
Lloyd, for example, is so stupid he doesn't think he's stupid, which is of course the worst kind of stupidity. He is a smug conniver, a banty little rooster who always gigglingly insists he's one step ahead, which is why he's always baffled when he gets trampled into the dust. Harry, on the other hand, has penetrated the concept that he's a mutt, which lends him the hangdog, please-rain-on-my-parade demeanor of the loser of all losers.
Another astute judgment is Carrey's. He basically was the whole show in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and "The Mask," but he clearly understands that it's the relationship between the two, with all its nattering and whining, that is the star. So he doesn't do a big star turn, and plays off the comic energy he and Daniels co-create.
Everyone else is adequate, though Holly is quite amusing as a woman who is charmed by the two of them, but not so much that she doesn't realize how appallingly stupid they are. No one could miss that.
"Dumb and Dumber"
Starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels
Directed by Peter Farrelly
Released by New Line
Rated PG-13
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