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| Released: |
1995 |
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| Genre: |
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Length: |
106 |
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MIXED Reviews
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| The plot is lame, but that doesn't matter, because Dumb and Dumber is essentially pitched at the level of an Airplane!-style movie, with rapid-fire sight gags. Some of them work, like the karate fight that ends with a guy getting his heart handed to him in a doggie bag. Some of them don't, like a curious scene where Carrey is hugging a girl and lifts the back of her skirt for no apparent reason: It seems creepy. For Jeff Daniels, the role is a departure from his usual deadpan comedy roles and straight drama. He fits right in. The relationship between the two guys creates a lot of the fun, as they discuss their grim lifestyle and their bizarre plans to improve it. The elements are here for a better movie, and Jim Carrey, I am now convinced, is a true original. In The Mask, he had the screenplay and production to back him up. Here, the filmmaking is more uncertain. |
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| (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) |
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| Carrey, zigzagging between twinkly-eyed infomercialpitchman bravado and sheer manic idiocy, does the postmodern smart-dumb clod with a new kind of whiplash abandon... He's like Robin Williams without the preciousness. In one of the film's highlights, he fantasizes himself at home with the woman of his dreams (Lauren Holly). As the Cowsills' 60s love-schlock ditty The Rain, the Park & Other Things bounces away on the soundtrack, we see the two caught in an angelic embrace - at which point Carrey flips up the back of her minidress, flashes a schoolboy leer, and then instantly returns to his "tender" romantic gaze. Almost any other comic would have turned that moment into a full-fledged daffy routine. With Carrey, it's just a grace note, but the look on his face lingers - wickedly. Unlike Jerry Lewis, he's too quick to let you catch him acting dumb. If Carrey is ever cast in a movie as witty as he is, it could be some sort of classic. But Dumb and Dumber, the best of his pictures so far, is still a middling vehicle. There may be limits to how much comic irony can be wrung out of the spectacle of two grown men acting like complete cretins. |
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| (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly) |
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, Harry ........... Jeff Daniels 