There is a fine line between so dumb it’s funny and just plain dumb. In a previous essay, I argued for Dumb & Dumber (1994) as one of the best written comedies of all time. On the flip side of that brainless coin there is Dumb & Dumber To (2014). Ignoring the horrific 2003 prequel Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, I always considered Dumb & Dumber To to be the more genuine companion to the original. Genuine, but not any good. Although I consider the original to be one of the best comedies of all time, I consider its 20 years later sequel to be one of the absolute worst. To me, Dumb & Dumber To is a prime example of what a sequel should not do when trying to capture the magic of its predecessor. 

The first mistake the movie makes relates to the writers or whoever hired them. It never seems to turn out great when a film has more than 2-3 writers (you could argue that three is pushing it). This sequel has six separate writing credits. I can’t say if any of them are particularly bad writers (again it can be argued that they are), but it’s undeniably difficult to write in a genre as subjective as comedy; especially when there are multiple clashing tastes and visions. Too many cooks in the kitchen as some would say. The original film had half as many writers and turned out significantly better. It’s as if the studio knew this sequel had greatly heightened audience expectations, so they overcompensated with writers to a damaging extent. Maybe this is just my opinion as a serial film lover, but I always believe that a singular vision is almost always superior to a script written by committee. Also, it shows that the studio was probably way more involved than they should have been, which is just another ingredient in the recipe for disastrous filmmaking .

The first mistake the writers make is that they betray the original spirit of the main characters.  In the first film, Harry and Lloyd were extremely dumb, but always likable. Good intentions were always at the heart of whatever they did. No matter how dumb they became, we the audience were willing to laugh at them because at the end of the day, we enjoyed their presence. In this sequel, the script betrays the characters by turning them into mean-spirited buffoons. Harry & Lloyd are somehow dumber here, which is a huge mistake. They were dumb enough in the first film, but it toed the line perfectly. How can we connect to characters who are not only dumb, but also morally reprehensible? As soon as the writers wrote them dumber, they quickly became annoying. It feels like they’re so dumb, they can’t even hold a conversation with anyone beside each other. Their stupidity wouldn’t allow it.  

This overly dimwitted approach to the characters is made clear in one of the film’s first scenes. We see an older Harry visiting Lloyd in what looks to be some kind of mental hospital, where it’s revealed that Lloyd has been in a near vegetative state for the last 20 years. The same as the gap between the sequels… Harry begins to talk to Lloyd and tells him that he needs to just get over Mary (his love interest from the first film). Out of nowhere, we see that Lloyd has filled up his bag of urine that is attached to his body by catheter. Harry sees this and selflessly attempts to help his good friend empty it. He detaches the bag from the tube, and then holds the bag with his mouth. Directly on the spot where the bag met the tube. There’s no set up or complicated writing here, just gross out humor. For example, the explosive diarrhea scene in the first film was funny not because of the gross-out element, but because of the way things swiftly and consistently devolved from bad to worse despite his efforts to stop it.  

That joke also works because it’s not random. Lloyd spikes the coffee with laxatives because he wants revenge for the fact that Mary is beginning to fall in love with Harry and not him. This small reasoning within the plot makes the scene feel natural and not gross out humor just for the sake of making the audience cringe. This also feels like the type of prank that someone as dumb as Lloyd would play. A laxative in a friend’s coffee is the absolute furthest he would go to get revenge, and I find that almost endearing. It is an undoubtedly mean-spirited thing for Lloyd to do, but in that particular scene, he has a specific motivation for his actions. Although his actions are mean, we accept them when taking into account his motivations as well as the state of his intelligence. In Dumb & Dumber To, Harry and Lloyd are mean-spirited the entire way through with almost no motivation for it. The duo’s idiotic but good-hearted nature was one of the reasons I fell in love with the first film, and it’s non-existent in the sequel.

So why did the toilet scene in the original work so well compared to a lot of the jokes in Dumb & Dumber To? Well, contrary to initial appearance, the bathroom scene may seem like an exercise in simplistic gross-out comedy. Once one begins to analyze the scene more closely, it becomes clear that the comedy is held more so in its ability to stack of comedic tension as opposed to deliver gross-out laughs. Once Harry is on the toilet, he begins to violently relieve himself. His physical performance is fantastic. His legs shoot up in the air as he’s sitting, his face contorts in strange shapes, and his breathing pattern becomes sporadic. The sound effects are appropriately nasty and over-the-top, which improves the wild and desperate nature of the situation. There’s also an element of great action here, but applied in a comedic fashion. Just like Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Fallout, when one problem is solved another quickly emerges. It stinks in the room, so he opens the window and begins to fan out the smell. Easy. Next, Mary knocks on the door to check on him. He panics, for she may smell the destruction of the bathroom and be completely disgusted by him. She then reveals that the toilet is broken. The camera quickly zooms to Harry’s face and horrific music plays. He proceeds to pick up the entire toilet and dump the contents out the window. Then it’s revealed there is no toilet paper. To me this element of “from bad to worse” is what makes this scene hilarious, not the gross out element. The gross element just adds to the embarrassment that we as an audience feel through Harry. It’s more like a comedic cherry on top as opposed to the primary source of comedy. It’s like the sequel’s writers forgot that and just assumed every fan of the original is just a juvenile idiot. “Haha I like the poop jokes.” It’s honestly insulting as a fan of the original film. 

I really believe one of the biggest failures of the sequel is its attempt to capture the magic of the first film. They recreate jokes, use the same types of jokes, and double down on some elements (the wrong elements). It’s a term thrown around a lot lately, but the sequel uses an immense amount of fan service. There can be good and bad fan service. Dumb & Dumber To is undeniably bad fan service and I’ll explain why. As Harry & Lloyd arrive home from the mental hospital, they pass the grown up version of the little blind boy whose parakeet they unintentionally killed in the first film. He has more birds this time and guess what? Harry and Lloyd accidentally kill them by throwing Pop Rocks on the ground and letting the birds feast. The only real differences here are that there are more birds and Harry and Lloyd don’t seem to care at all when they are told the birds’ stomachs will explode. They just shrug their shoulders and continue on. These characters were always dumb, but when did they become assholes? They felt so guilty in the first film that they were willing to cover it up by taping the severed head of the kids bird back to its body and returning it to him. Dark, but idiotically well intended. They’re never told what is wrong with what they’re doing and therefore don’t get a chance to reflect on their actions. In the sequel, they’re told exactly what kinds of bad things will happen and they choose to ignore it. This makes us hate these characters as opposed to finding them endearingly buffoonish.

 Anyway, the blind boy isn’t integrated into the story. He’s just there for the audience to say, “I remember that! It was funny before so it should be funny now. Right?” Like I said before, totally insulting. The CHARACTERS are dumb, not your audience! The blind boy’s appearance serves nothing other than nostalgia and I consider that bad fan service. If a writer of a sequel is going to make callbacks to the original, they should be naturally integrated into the story (not that Dumb & Dumber To has much of one). 

In their apartment, Harry reveals to Lloyd that he is in serious need of a kidney transplant. Our first hint that there may be a plot! Don’t hold your breath. Lloyd does not take the information seriously whatsoever, signaling to the audience that they shouldn’t either. Again, I’m insulted. What proceeds is a series of moments that lead from one dumb joke to an even dumber joke. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the jokes are funny, but that’s sort of a catch 22. It’s nearly impossible to have an effectively funny movie without great characters and story context for the jokes. Some sketch comedies are better at setting up character and context than this film. It’s not as if the plot was extremely complex in the first Dumb & Dumber, it’s just that it often prioritized story over comedy which naturally led to the improvement of the jokes. There is no nuance to any of the comedy in Dumb & Dumber To, and I believe that’s because the comedy is all they focused on, which ironically makes the comedy suffer.

I think the writers severely misunderstood what made the first film great, believing that audiences liked the film because it was “dumb.” If you make art for dumb people, the product will be undeniably stupid. If you make a smart movie with dumb characters, the audience will be able to laugh with them, instead of at them. This is a far more potent type of comedy than laughing at someone because they’re dumb. Very few jokes in the original are funny because the characters are unintelligent; there’s almost always a complex situational detail that makes the scene funny aside from the characters’ stupidity. Lack of story, originality, and character consistency tanked just about every ounce of enjoyment Dumb & Dumber To may have once had. It truly is a shame that people so passionate about the film, with the original crew and all, miscalculated so disappointingly. 

Now, if you are given the choice to watch Dumb & Dumber, don’t fret. The title is somewhat misleading. You will be in for an admittedly silly treat. If you are given the choice to watch Dumb & Dumber To, you better run for the hills. That seems to be what the writers did.