Dumb and Dumber To

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.25 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Dumb and Dumber To rounds out the epic Dumb & Dumber trilogy. Like all great epics, going back to Homer’s Odyssey, the story began in the middle with 1994’s Dumb & Dumber, then took us back to the beginning in 2003 with Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. Now 20 years after the epic saga began, we experience the exciting and emotional conclusion with Dumb and Dumber To.

Nick: The Farrelly’s had nothing to do with the prequel. I don’t think it’s considered part of the canon so let’s call this the second film in the series. One way to prove this is I laughed constantly through the original and the new one while I only laughed once in the prequel and that was because of the gas station clerk played by Brian Posehn.

Dustin: I should mention I only saw the first movie shortly after it came to home video. I remember the famous Sea Bass scene, the boy with the dead parakeet, but not much else. I didn’t see the prequel. I went into this movie knowing what it was, but still pretty fresh.

Having said that, I think this movie basically did a good job fulfilling what was promised in the trailers. As a low-brow comedy about a couple of cartoonish buffoons, it worked on that level.

Nick: I have fond memories of the original, mainly because my mother wouldn’t let me see it (I was 7), but then she also wouldn’t let me rent it (I was 10), but then my awesome ne’er-do-well cousin rented it and let me watch it. It was epic… for what my 10-year-old brain considered epic. Dumb and Dumber To is not only as funny as the original, but it might have a slightly better concept and plot for a wacky comedy. The first film is just Lloyd falls in love with a woman who left her briefcase in his limo and wants to return it to her in the hopes she will return his undying love. This one has the same road trip comedy feel, but has a lot more players with a couple of twists at the end.

Dustin: As I don’t remember the original too well, I’ll say judging from this movie, the characters weren’t always consistent. I thought they showed different levels of stupidity at times, which was distracting. Sometimes they seemed like they had autism, other times they just seemed somewhat goofy. Was that something established in the first one? Did you ever get that feeling?

Nick: In the first one and in this one it seems to me that Jeff Daniels is Dumb while Jim Carrey is Dumber. Whenever Dumb is around Dumber he becomes slightly more dumb by proxy.

Nick: Daniels’s Dumb mostly lacks social cues and can’t function on his own, so it could be a possibly form of autism. While Dumber is just be in erratic idiot who functions as well as a 6-year-old. But to be honest I have never tried to pick it apart that much before. It’s bothersome, but so many more movies have such larger issues than the varying levels of dumb that are displayed by characters who are Dumb and Dumber. Like Mark Wahlberg growing up in Texas with a Boston accent while building robots and understanding alien technology in order to build said alien robots back together.

Dustin: As it occurred to me a couple times these characters probably had some kind of autism-spectrum disorder, I wasn’t always comfortable laughing at them. I’d like it better if they were just slow like Homer Simpson, sort of a cartoonish stupidity.

Nick: I feel they are. I mostly laugh at the stuff they caused and not so much at them. Jim Carrey’s rubbery face always gets me. He could have been portraying a Texan with a Boston accent who somehow understands alien technology enough to build robots with it, and I would still laugh hysterically.

Dustin: Did the first one have the gross-out humor this one had? I know other Farrelly brothers movies have it, but I didn’t feel like it was necessary.

Nick: There was a diarrhea scene in the original that was actually quite funny. This one has a lot of that humor, but while it normally annoys me (especially in their films) for the sheer stupidity it mostly works besides one instance of when the cat had farted out bird feathers when I thought enough happened in that scene to make me laugh. I was laughing pretty hard, but when that happened I ceased laughing out of anger while everyone around continued to bust a gut.

It seemed Lloyd had found his true love in the first one, and yet it didn’t end in that manner. Made me kind of sad.

By the way... What do you think sex is?

Dustin: That’s an interesting question, as it ties into the something said near the end of the film. I usually default to penile penetration of the vagina, but I know experts pretty much say any form of undressed intimacy is sex.

Nick: Experts can be pretty dumb.

Dustin: This thought was going through my head when Kathleen Turner explained what sex is to Harold and Lloyd. We didn’t hear what she said, but what Dumb and Dumber had apparently done with her would probably be considered sex to a lot of people.

While Dumb and Dumber To is a ‘90s-style low-brow comedy made to cash in on nostalgia, it delivered enough laughs to please fans of the original.

Dear White People

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Dear White People is a comedy/drama/social commentary showing some of the bone-headed ways white people interact with black people, while also poking fun at some of the ways black people are oversensitive to media depictions (like Sam’s argument for why Gremlins is a racist movie).

What did you think of Dear White People, Nick?

Nick: A comedy that is able to transcend the tag of just being funny to give its characters depth and the ability to grow and change is a rare find. Dear White People is so good at certain times it felt as if I were in the room talking to college kids about their radical views and not just watching actors portray that on film.

Dustin: The movie wasn’t as funny as I was expecting from the trailer (this is one of those comedies where all the funny stuff is in the trailer), however, I agree the characters had enough depth that I was able to enjoy this movie on its other strengths. This is the first commentary on race that I’ve seen where I didn’t feel like it was preaching to the choir (A Day Without a Mexican) or insulting to the audience’s intelligence (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner).

Nick: Dear White People isn’t funny in a losing your breath from laughing sort of way, but more in a poignant way. The dialogue made me smile constantly from its clever ways of depicting a person, place or thing in terms of the perspective of each race. So, stop me and edit this out if I’m being insensitive at all, but my favorite part of seeing the film was being the only white person in an all black audience. When the movie started there were only 10 people in the theater and 30 minutes into the movie there were almost 40. There was a joke in the movie about how the stereotype of black people being late is not true for all black people! Not only that, but there is a joke early on where the black kids confront one of the main characters, Lionel, a young black man who is gay, and tell him that just because they’re black doesn’t mean they are homophobic.  So when the character said that I kind of scoffed because in my experience that is not the case, but my belief was somewhat proven later on when a character kissed the black kid. When the film was setting up that kiss the whole theater started to scream, “NO!” Not kidding, wish I was. Every other person, other than me, started freaking the fuck out, and not in a humorous way, but in “that’s fucked up” sort of way. It pissed me off beyond all reason. This is the first time I kind of enjoyed the loudness of the movie theater as it acted kind of like a reassurance for what the film was trying to put a finger on. Though in saying that, I still look forward to viewing the movie in a quiet space.

Dustin: I saw it in a far less packed theater, maybe 10 other people. I cringed during that scene, and I felt the audience’s reaction too, but it wasn’t so strong. I don’t know if that makes me a homophobe, but I often find kisses on screen, even between straight characters, to be awkward, as well as in real life.

Nick: I don’t know. I think it’s more of how you feel on the inside about that.  Anyways, I had to move three times in that movie theater because of the people who were arriving late would decide to sit next to me and show me why I would not want to sit next to them very quickly. The first time, an older woman came in and had her phone volume turned up and brightness all the way on and kept playing with her phone for 5 minutes. In the 10 minutes that I sat next to her she would speak every time a character uttered a word she would turn to her friends and go, “Mmhmm, that’s right!”... sigh…  

All the main characters served a purpose and did, equally, both likable and unlikable things. It’s really enjoyable to watch people who have faults instead of “perfect” people portrayed by Hollywood films.

Dustin: I thought some of the characters were stereotypes, but I believe that was the intention of the film makers. I’m referring to the university president’s son who is a total pig and the militant guy in the black student group. I think they balanced each other out and showed some of the extreme ends. The other characters were very well developed and had arcs.

Nick: All the characters started out as stereotypes, but all the main characters, the four main black characters, grew into a blend of the beliefs they held and what they have come to realize.  

Dustin: I thought the best touches where in the ways liberal whites can unintentionally be racist, and showing how that hurts black people. Such as touching black people’s hair.

Nick: I know this is a filmmaker thing, but with the camera Sam uses and the video cam that Coco uses they wouldn’t be able to get anything but distorted sound on their devices. So I laughed every time when their videos were shown and the sound was crisp and clear, especially in Sam’s last video when she records the fight and it has clear sound and voices, yet she has no sound equipment and that kind of camera doesn’t record sound! Sorry… had to get that out there… phew!

Dustin: Overall, Dear White People was a clever satire aimed at both liberal white audiences as well as black audiences. It was entertaining, even though it was rarely laugh-out-loud funny.