Directed by Bobby and Peter Farelly
Written by Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, and Bennett Yellin
Release Date: 16 December 1994
Running Time: 107 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Editor’s Rating: 3.5 out of 4 headless birds


Poor Lloyd. All he wants to do is open a worm farm with his best buddy, Harry. But unfortunately, he just can’t hold down a job to save his life. And neither can Harry. But when a red-haired pixie named Mary Samsonite, er, Swanson, gets into his limo for a ride to the airport and steamrolls her way over Lloyd’s heart, he can only think of one thing: Getting her to re-inflate it.

By boning him.

Mary also leaves a suitcase behind at the airport, and ever the gentleman, Lloyd dashes in to try and return it to her before she leaves. Problem is, she’s already gone by the time he gets to the jet way, something Lloyd discovers for himself as he looks up in agony from the airport’s unforgivingly hard tarmac.

Somehow, his heroic actions end up getting him fired from his tenure as a driver, and he is once again forced into searching for gainful employment. Upon getting back to his apartment, he and Harry commiserate on their days. Turns out Harry lost his job as well: apparently it’s not a great idea to drive a truckload of show-ready purebred dogs across town with fast food along for the ride. Who knew?

Anyway, this giant pity party is interrupted when the two people who were supposed to take Ms. Swanson’s briefcase track them down. Not only are they two of the most stereotypical thugs you’ve ever seen in a movie, they’re also the stupidest. This makes me want to talk about other things, bear with me.

I want to make a theory based on a YouTube video I saw some time ago, regarding what happens to your body when you drink. Specifically, what happens when you fall from any distance while hammered. When we drink, we lose our inhibitions. That’s a known fact. However, a little less known is that when you get yourself schnockered, you end up getting loose. Like, physically loose. To the point that drunk people are so loose that when they fall over (or off a building) that they don’t tense up like sober people do.

You know, because they think they’re going to die.

By that analogy, I like to think of Harry and Lloyd as big, fat, stupid, stinkin’ drunks. They have an uncanny ability to slip through just as many stupid things as they get themselves into throughout the course of the film, and it’s just a sheer work of art to see it unfold.

So Harry and Lloyd escape their would-be accosters, and when they get back to the apartment later that night, the thugs have ransacked their home, even causing Harry’s beloved parakeet, Petey, to die of natural causes. Poor Petey. He died so naturally his head fell off.

And now, a moment of silence for a bird who died peacefully of a fallen off head. Truly you will be missed.

Driven by their beloved pet’s loss, but mainly Lloyd’s urge to return Mary’s briefcase, Harry and Lloyd venture forward to Aspen, Colorado, to reunite Lloyd and his estranged long lost love he spent fifteen beautiful minutes with. What follows is nothing less than the greatest road trip of a generation, and a tale of stupidity you’d have to be, well, dumb not to love.

The main (read: only) star of this film is the chemistry between Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey. These guys take every second of screen time either together or apart and turn it into pure gold. They’re so committed to their characters that it’s hilarious - who doesn’t want to see a couple dudes in their thirties acting like complete children? Well, pretty much anyone who would have to deal with them in real life, but that’s the great thing about film: they’re not real! Wheee!

So, what makes this film superior to its sequel? Well to put it bluntly, it’s that every joke that works in Dumb and Dumber To works because it was in the first film. The first also has a more believable plot, believe it or not. The comedy is fresher edgier, and dumber. The original has an effortlessness to Harry and Lloyd’s dialogue and its neverending one-liners and puns that the sequel just seems to be trying to imitate, but not reproduce in any new way.

That’s why it’s great to sit down with the original and have a nice hour and a half with some top comic acting from players that were in their prime, backed by an up-and-coming crew that knew exactly how to set the scene for max hilarity. So I recommend you sit down, grab some brain food, turn on your Smart TV, and watch Dumb and Dumber. Your brain might not love you for it, but its sense of humor will be thanking you for weeks.

**I rented this film from a streaming service I pay a yearly subscription for. I was not compensated for this review.**