Not a Movie Snob - Dumb and Dumber

Posted on Tuesday, December 02, 2014 at 02:00 PM

"I like it a lot"

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Movie Review by Griffintainment X CalgaryMovies.com

Those yellow and blue Fisher Price roller skates with the orange wheels; Gameboy; Saved By The Bell; 90's alternative rock; sour gumballs; Tamagotchi; pogo ball; late 80's to mid 90's Disney movies. These are the things that helped define what it was to grow up in the years that I did. These are things that, when I come across them now, illicit a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach known as pure nostalgia.

Dumb and Dumber is a movie that belongs on that list. It's a movie that I watched countless (literally, countless) times growing up. I knew every line by heart. Every image burned into my memory banks like an inter-cranial tattoo. The (mis)adventures of Harry and Lloyd provided the laugh track to my formative years as resolutely as Nirvana did the soundtrack. 

It's always strange to watch such a movie after not watching it for a number of years and to see it through a whole new set of eyes. The last time I watched Dumb and Dumber, I was younger, has less kids, less life experience, less responsibility. I had watched many hundreds of hours less television and movies. I had a different job, a different house, lived in a different city. Does life experience alter the way you see the world? Does it alter what you find funny, or sad? Does it cause you to yearn for, or buck against, childhood entertainments?

I didn't know what I'd find watching this movie again after so many years. And it has been a few. I own the DVD of the movie, but its sat unopened on my shelf since I bought it. Since last I saw Dumb and Dumber I've read many books on the craft of filmmaking and script writing. I've watched masterpieces and rewatched beloved classics. I've been through a few months of film school and learned how a movie is made from the inside out. Would this hurt the way I saw this beloved film? Would I find it amateurish, buffoonish, boring? Worst of all, would I even find it funny any more?

As it turns out, I would. From the opening scene, a scene I've watched a thousand times (perhaps literally), I was hooked. The moment Lloyd's limo pulls up to the gorgeous Austrian awaiting a bus, I was flooded not only with distant and distinct memories, but with appreciation. As the movie charged ahead, I was enraptured by it. I laughed out loud throughout, I was reminded of its wit, its originality and especially its brilliant soundtrack. A soundtrack I owned on cassette and wore the tape thin on. It took me back to my childhood and truly felt like having coffee with a friend you haven't seen since grade six who you tracked down on Facebook. A hilarious friend. A friend who would trade in a van dressed up like a dog for a minibike with lawnmower tires.

Dumb and Dumber, along with Planes, Trains and Automobiles, is one of the great road trip comedies. And as specific a set of subgenre classifications as that is for a film, there are actually quite a few of them. It combines brilliant performances from its two leads, great locals (why don't more people shoot films in Aspen?), amazing tunes that compliment the events on the screen perfectly, and a hell of a debut script (writing stupidity this witty takes a great deal of intelligence). The fact that this was the Farrelly Bros. first film is pretty amazing.

Is it perfect? No. But for all its continuity errors, its sloppy editing, its cheesy supporting roles, its six inch toenails, it works on many more levels than it conceptually should. That's something that the Farrelly Bros. have lucked out on on occasion in their somewhat inconsistent career.

So call it talent, call it an alignment of the stars, call it chemistry, or call it plain old nostalgic soft spottedness, but Dumb and Dumber is an amazing film that hasn't aged a bit and I suspect will only continue to humour, surprise and entertain for many years to come. A comedy classic.

Rating: ****1/2