<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly. Starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rachel Melvin, Kathleen Turner, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden

A lot of the jokes in Dumb and Dumber To fell flat and the ones that got the most laughs were from the under 15-year-olds. Strange considering it has an A rating here in India.

We all love Jim Carrey. His physical comedy and facial contortions entertained us through our childhood with films like Pet Detective, Liar Liar and The Mask. And after a long hiatus he’s back in a sequel that comes 20 years after the original film. I don’t remember the first one though but I’m sure lots of teenagers at the time had a ball watching it.

In America, Dumb and Dumber To has a PG13 rating, which means kids 13 and over can watch it without supervision. And it’s pretty alright if they do considering most kids nowadays are exposed to way more vulgarity. Especially in the Hindi films they watch in India that end up with U/A ratings! The theatres here have realised the Censor Board is pretty batty and don’t mind kids watching the Adult rated Hollywood films considering all the English movies are getting A ratings now!

Anyway, so back to Dumb and Dumber To. Lloyd (Jim Carrey) has been stuck at a mental hospital for the last 20 years where he’s a vegetable and old buddy Harry (Jeff Daniels) has been faithfully taking care of him – including cleaning his dirty diapers – until one day he gives up and only then to be told by Lloyd that he’s been had! It’s all just a joke and off they go to resume their seemingly unchanged lives. But a lot has happened. Harry needs a new kidney and finds out that he may have a daughter who can help him out. Lloyd thinks she’s pretty and they set out to find her.

Of course their bumbling involves stumbling on a plot by Harry’s daughter’s adoptive mother Adele (Laurie Holden) to swindle her adoptive father and run off with their Man Friday (Rob Riggle). It gets a bit convoluted after a point though and even tiresome. The old gags and slapstick vulgarity are well… old. You’ll still have a chuckle and the kids will have their first exposure to good old scatological humour.

Both Carrey and Daniels are good together but its obvious they’re past their prime and are working on a slim budget with poor production values. It’s got a very B-movie feel to it and even though it tries to summon up some of the 80s nostalgia it doesn’t always get it right. Some of the flashback/dream scenes are pretty fun though.

Dumb and Dumber To is another film like The Expendables that shows us that some of our old great actors and their memories should not be sullied.