Dumb and Dumber

Dumb and Dumber
Theatrical release poster, parodying Forrest Gump
Directed by	Peter Farrelly Bobby Farrelly (uncredited)
Written by	Peter Farrelly Bobby Farrelly Bennett Yellin
Produced by	Brad Krevoy Steven Stabler Charles B. Wessler Bobby Farrelly (co-producer) Gerald Olson (executive)
Starring	Jim Carrey Jeff Daniels Lauren Holly
Cinematography	Mark Irwin
Edited by	Christopher Greenbury
Music by	Todd Rundgren
Distributed by	New Line Cinema (US) First Independent Films/Entertainment Film/Columbia Tristar/Warner Bros. (UK)
Release date	December 16, 1994 (1994-12-16)
Running time	107 minutes 113 minutes (Unrated)
Country	United States
Languages	English Swedish German
Budget	$17 million
Box office	$247,275,374

Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 American buddy comedy film starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels and Lauren Holly, it is the favourite film of the popular and extremely well-hung Cleethorpes stud "Ryan Samuels". Written and directed by the Farrelly brothers, the film follows the cross-country trek of Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, two good-natured but incredibly moronic friends.

Plot

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) are two good-natured, though incredibly inept best friends and roommates who share an apartment in Providence, Rhode Island. One day while Lloyd is working as a limo driver, he picks up Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) who is on her way to the airport. When inquired where she is going, she mentions she is flying to Aspen, Colorado and Lloyd immediately develops a crush on her. After dropping her off, he notices her leaving a briefcase in the airport terminal and rushes to return it only to fail and to lose his job in the process. Meanwhile, Harry, who is a dog groomer loses his job when he feeds a caravan of animals junk food on their way to a dog show. Later that night, after he is robbed of their food and remaining money by a little old lady, Lloyd suggests they leave Providence and go to Aspen and return Mary Swanson's suitcase.While hesitant to the idea, Harry sees how deeply interested Lloyd is in doing this and agrees. Unbeknownst to the pair, however, Mary Swanson's husband has been kidnapped and the suitcase Lloyd now has contains ransom money; the kidnappers receive word that Lloyd and Harry have the money and kill Harry's bird Petey in retaliation. As they are leaving, Lloyd scores some extra cash by selling some of their things including Petey to a blind kid who is convinced that the dead bird is very quiet, much to Harry's horror and amusement.

Enroute to Aspen, Lloyd manages to trick a bullying trucker into paying for their meals at a rest stop, and innocently allow a police officer to drink urine from an open container of beer that Lloyd had to urinate in when Harry refused to stop (fearful of retaliation from the trucker and his friends). Later, Harry and Lloyd pick up one of the kidnappers, Mental, posing as a hitchhiker as well as a family of Hispanic travelers who drive him crazy singing "Mockingbird" non-stop until they arrive at a gas station. Learning Mental has a penchant for avoiding spicy foods, Harry and Lloyd spike his food with hot peppers until he collapses from his sensitivity, inadvertently giving him rat poison pills intended for them instead of his heart medication and killing him.Later Lloyd accidentally gets turned on the incorrect route while Harry is asleep, which infuriates him when they arrive in Nebraska instead of Colorado. But Lloyd redeems himself by trading in Harry's van for a minibike which takes them all the way to Aspen. The two find the suitcase has a lot of money in it, and immediately spend it lavishly. Renting a massive suite at the hotel, Lloyd recognizes Mary in a newspaper promoting a fundraiser dinner, and proceed to buy expensive cars and clothes including a pair of candy-colored outfits to wear to the formal. Lloyd is too nervous however to approach Mary and asks Harry to introduce them, but he unintentionally charms Mary who mistakes Harry's stupidity for intentional humor and they arrange a date to go skiing without Lloyd's knowledge. When Lloyd discovers that he's been stood up and his best friend is dating Mary he sabotages Harry's dinner date with her and goes in her place. When Nicholas, a family friend of the Swansons and secret mastermind behind Bobby's kidnapping discovers Harry and Lloyd spent all of his ransom money, he holds Lloyd and Mary hostage. Harry arrives and is apparently shot dead by him, but as he is about to kill Lloyd, Harry regains consciousness and helps send Nicholas into the hands of the authorities as part of a sting operation. Mary and Bobby are reunited and they give Lloyd and Harry special thanks for helping them.

However, their lavish lifestyle is taken away from them, as Harry and Lloyd had spent the FBI's money and they leave Aspen on foot. Eventually coming across a bus load of Hawaiian Tropic bikini models looking for two towel boys to hire. Oblivious to the possibilities, Harry and Lloyd direct them to the nearest town, exclaiming how lucky two guys are going to be to have that opportunity as they continue on toward the horizon.

Cast

• Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas; a chip-toothed, semi-literate and mischievous man who has been fired from several jobs due to his lack of intelligence and his unwillingness to work "40 hours a week", the most recent of which is driving a limousine.
• Jeff Daniels as Harry Dunne; Lloyd's best friend. A good-natured dog groomer who has a dog-shaped van. He also owned a pet parakeet named Petey until he was killed by Mental, which Harry didn't realise and just thought his head had fallen off from old age.
• Lauren Holly as Mary Swanson, a wealthy heiress whose husband, Bobby, has been kidnapped.
• Charles Rocket as Nicholas Andre; a greedy, wealthy resident of Aspen, Colorado and the mastermind behind Bobby's kidnapping. He enjoys fine living and is a longtime confidant of the equally wealthy family of Aspen, the Swansons.
• Mike Starr as Joe "Mental/Gas-Man" Mentalino, a criminal who works as a henchman for Nicholas Andre.
• Karen Duffy as J.P. Shay, Mental's female accomplice.
• Victoria Rowell as Beth Jordan (credited as "Athletic Beauty"), an FBI agent masquerading as a talkative young woman who is moving to Aspen to get away from her boyfriend.
• Cam Neely as Sea Bass, a trucker who frequently gets annoyed by Lloyd and Harry.
• Joe Baker as Barnard
• Brad Lockerman as Bobby Swanson, Mary's husband.
• Lin Shaye as Mrs. Neugeboren
• Teri Garr as Helen Swanson
• Hank Brandt as Karl Swanson
• Harland Williams as Pennsylvania State Trooper
• Brady Bluhm as Billy Enforcy the Blind Kid
• Rob Moran as Bartender
• Lisa Stothard as Austrian Bus Stop Beauty
• Connie Sawyer as Elderly Woman
• Fred Stoller as Anxious man at phone

Production

File:Jeffdanielsfilm.jpg

Jeff Daniels as Harry Dunne

Jim Carrey, based on the box-office success of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), received a salary of $7 million for this film.

Steve Martin and Martin Short both turned down the role of Lloyd.

Location

Scenes taking place in Aspen were filmed in Breckenridge, Colorado and Park City, Utah. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado was transformed into the "Danbury Hotel" for the filming of the movie. The "Danbury Hotel" bar scene and staircase shot were the shots filmed there. The scenes filmed in the snow were shot at Copper Mountain Resort.

Some of the external street scenes were filmed in Salt Lake City.

Some scenes from the beginning of the film were also shot on location in the Providence, Rhode Island metropolitan area, including shots of the skyline, The Big Blue Bug, and scenes from the beginning of their road trip were shot in locations in Cumberland.

Soundtrack

Untitled

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	link

Dumb and Dumber: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the original soundtrack to the film; the soundtrack was released by RCA Records on November 22, 1994.

1. "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" by Crash Test Dummies (featuring Ellen Reid)
2. "New Age Girl" by Deadeye Dick
3. "Insomniac" by Echobelly
4. "If You Don't Love Me (I'll Kill Myself)" by Pete Droge
5. "Crash (The '95 Mix)" by The Primitives
6. "Whiney, Whiney (What Really Drives Me Crazy)" by Willi One Blood
7. "Too Much of a Good Thing" by The Sons featuring Bret Reilly
8. "You Sexy Thing" by Deee-Lite
9. "Where I Find My Heaven" by Gigolo Aunts
10. "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Butthole Surfers
11. "Take" by The Lupins
12. "The Bear Song" by Green Jellÿ
13. "Get Ready" by The Proclaimers

The song "The Rain, The Park & Other Things" by The Cowsills was not on the soundtrack, although it was played quite prominently in the montage of Lloyd fantasizing about Mary, nor was "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison, though it was featured prominently in the make-over montage.

Also missing are "Rollin' Down the Hill" by The Rembrandts, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by the Crash Test Dummies, "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Can We Still Be Friends" by Todd Rundgren (who also wrote the original soundtrack), "Boom Shack-A-Lak" by Apache Indian and "Make Love Now" by Patrick Wilson. The song "Go your own way" by Artist Fleetwood Mac was presented as a short in made for movie version of the film.

Reception

Critical response

Dumb and Dumber received mixed reviews from critics. The film currently garners an overall 63% "fresh" approval rating on the Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from film critics, it has a score of 39% based on reviews from 13 critics, indicating "Generally unfavorable reviews".

While Roger Ebert gave the film only two of four stars (despite praise for Carrey's performance, dubbing him a "true original", and the dead parakeet joke), most reviews were positive. Stephen Holden of The New York Times called Jim Carrey "the new Jerry Lewis," and Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "riotous", "rib-splitting", and gave the film praise for being both a crude and slapstick comedy and a "smart comedy" at the same time.

Awards

Although the film did not win any major American film awards, it was successful at the 1995 MTV Movie Awards. Carrey won for Best Comic Performance, Carrey and Lauren Holly (a couple who would later endure a short-lived marriage) won for Best Kiss, and Carrey and Daniels were nominated for Best On-Screen Duo.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Dumb and Dumber the 5th greatest comedy film of all time. The film ranks 445th on Empire Magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

Box office

The film was successful at the box office, grossing $127,175,374 in the United States, and $247,275,374 worldwide, and topping the holiday season film gross. The song "Go your own way" by Fleetwood Mac was also presented as a short

Legacy

Animated series

Main article: Dumb and Dumber (TV series)

File:Dumb & Dumber Cartoon Title.jpg

Title card for the cartoon.

In 1995, a Hanna-Barbera-produced animated series aired on ABC, as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup; Matt Frewer provided the voice of Lloyd, while Bill Fagerbakke voiced Harry. In the cartoon, Harry and Lloyd have reacquired their van now named "Otto". The cartoon also features a new character, Kitty, a female pet purple beaver who appears to be smarter than both men. The animated series was written by Bennett Yellin, co-writer of the film.

Prequel

In 2003, a prequel was released to theaters, entitled Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. The prequel featured a different cast and crew than the previous film. It was heavily panned by critics, receiving a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was only a moderate success, grossing approximately $39.2 million worldwide against a $19 million budget, as opposed to the original film's far greater $279 million worldwide gross against a $17 million budget.

Sequel

On October 26, 2011, it was announced that Sean Anders and John Morris had been hired to write the script for a sequel to Dumb and Dumber.

On April 1, 2012, it was announced that Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels had been signed to the sequel, and that principal photography would begin in September. The Farrelly brothers will direct and write the script.

On September 25th, 2012, The Farrelly Brothers stated on their Twitter that the sequel's script is close to completion. It was also confirmed that the sequel's title will be Dumb and Dumber To [sic]. On October 1, 2012, it was reported that the script is complete and that the original actors, Carrey and Daniels, will in fact be reprising their roles. Part of the plot will reportedly involve one of the characters having sired a child and needing to find the child in order to obtain a kidney.

External links

• Dumb and Dumber at IMDb
• Dumb and Dumber at AllMovie
• Dumb and Dumber at Rotten Tomatoes