Dumb and Dumber

Dumb and Dumber
Theatrical release poster, parodying Forrest Gump
Directed by	The Farrelly Brothers
Produced by	Brad Krevoy Steven Stabler Charles B. Wessler Bobby Farrelly Gerald Olson
Written by	Peter Farrelly Bobby Farrelly Bennett Yellin
Starring	Jim Carrey Jeff Daniels Lauren Holly
Music by	Todd Rundgren
Cinematography	Mark Irwin
Editing by	Christopher Greenbury
Studio	Motion Picture Corporation of America Conundrum Entertainment
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	December 16, 1994 (1994-12-16)
Running time	107 minutes 113 minutes (Unrated)
Country	United States
Language	English Swedish German
Budget	$17 million
Box office	$279,943,217

Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 picaresque or buddy comedy film starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. 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. Making heavy use of slapstick comedy and gross-out humor, Dumb and Dumber contributed to the launch of a successful career for the Farrelly brothers.

Plot

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) is a simple-minded limousine driver in Providence, Rhode Island. Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), Lloyd's roommate and buddy, is a part-time self-employed pet groomer who drives the "Shaggin’ Wagon", a van converted into what looks like a shaggy dog. They plan to open their own pet store that sells worm farms, though their lack of finances are troubling them. One day, Lloyd becomes infatuated with his passenger client, Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly), on her way to the airport and ultimately home to her family in Aspen, Colorado. Mary intentionally leaves a briefcase in the airport terminal. Dragging Harry with him, Lloyd heads off to Aspen to deliver the case to her personally. However, Mary isn't the only person after the case, as a pair of criminals are after the same case.

Cast

• Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas; a 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; a good-natured dog groomer, and best friend to Lloyd.
• Lauren Holly as Mary Swanson, a woman whose husband, Bobby, has been kidnapped.
• Charles Rocket as Nicholas Andre; a wealthy resident of Aspen, Colorado, who enjoys fine living. Andre is a long-time confidant of the equally wealthy family of Aspen, the Swansons.
• Mike Starr as Joe "Mental/Gas-Man" Mentalino; a cold-hearted criminal who works as a henchman for Nicholas Andre. He suffers from severe digestive problems, including ulcers and intestinal gas, for which he is continually seen popping prescription antacid pills.
• 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 clumsy boyfriend.
• Cam Neely as Sea Bass, a trucker. Neely, also had a brief cameo in one of Jim Carrey's later films, Me, Myself and Irene, again playing Sea Bass.
• 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 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

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.

Although the president and chairman of New Line Cinema requested that the Farrelly Brothers shoot an alternate ending with Harry and Lloyd getting on the bus, the directors and Jim Carrey refused, insisting vehemently that Harry and Lloyd were too stupid to get on the bus with the bikini models.

Filmmakers wanted to film the restaurant scene (with Sea Bass) at a restaurant in Wiggins, Colorado. After viewing the script, however, the owner refused. Then the scene was filmed in Fort Morgan.

In the bar scene in Aspen, the line "No way... that's great. We've landed on the moon!" was not in the script but an impromptu addition by Jim Carrey on the spot during shooting.

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

Location

Scenes taking place in Aspen were actually 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 stair case shot were the shots filmed there. The scenes filmed in the snow were shot at Copper Mountain Resort.

Most of the external street scenes were filmed in Salt Lake City.^{[citation needed]} The opening scene (the limo scene) was filmed on 500 East, between 500 South and 600 South. The scenes at the "Providence Airport" were actually filmed at Salt Lake City International Airport. The external courtyard of Harry and Lloyd's apartment (where they give the little blind boy Petey the parakeet) was filmed at 226 South and 300 East. The scene with the "sweet ol' lady on the motorized cart" was filmed in front of Thomson & Burrows Antique Store at 270 East and 300 South. The interior shots of Harry and Lloyd's apartment were filmed in the historic Union Pacific Railway Station in downtown Salt Lake. Mary Swanson's mansion is on Perseverance Court in Park City. Additional filming was at LaCaille Restaurant near Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon.

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.

Reception

Box office

The film was very 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.

Critical response

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 very 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.^{[citation needed]} The film ranks 445th on Empire Magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

The unrated version

An unrated version was released in 2006 adding 6 minutes of footage to the film, culminating in 113 minutes.

Added/removed scenes

• In the unrated version, when Harry and Lloyd are in the truckstop diner, Harry complains to the waitress that his drink is no longer fizzy. The waitress deals with this by rudely grabbing the glass and blowing bubbles through the straw.
• In the original version, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" by XTC (covered by Crash Test Dummies for the film) plays during the scene where Harry, Lloyd, and Mental are in the restaurant. This song is absent in the unrated version.
• After the gas station scene, a new scene occurs while driving where Harry makes fun of Lloyd about being in a bathroom with a 6'4" man with his pants down.

Differences

• In the original version, when Mental tears Petey's (Harry's parakeet) head off, it cuts after he says "I Tawt I Taw a Putty Tat!." In the unrated version, it shows him violently squeezing Petey's head with his fists.
• In the original version, Sea Bass is about to spit on Harry's burger, but the camera cuts to Lloyd, while the spitting sound is still heard. In the unrated version, it shows the spit coming out of his mouth onto the burger.
• The unrated version features an extended dialogue scene between Lloyd and Harry in the honeymoon motel.
• In the unrated version, when Mental and Shay are waiting by the side of the road for Harry and Lloyd to drive by, Shay says to Joe: "Keep your shirt on, I gotta squeeze a lemon" and crouches down.
• In the unrated version, when Sea Bass finds Lloyd in the bathroom, Lloyd keeps repeating "Find a happy place" to which Sea Bass replies, "I'll show you a happy place!" before dropping his own pants and grabbing his crotch.
• In the unrated version, it features an extra scene prior to Harry's departure to the slopes with Mary, in which Lloyd comments on Harry's "revealing" ski suit.
• In the original version, when Harry is attempting to fix Mary's toilet, he shouts out that he's shaving, and we see Mary standing at the door. The unrated version shows Harry lifting the toilet to the window and dumping its contents out.
• In the original version, it is only implied that Sea Bass was trying to rape Lloyd however in the unrated he states that he is.
• The unrated version cuts out extended dialogue in the restaurant scene with Harry, Lloyd, and Mental.

Legacy

Animated series

Main article: Dumb and Dumber (TV series)

Title card

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. 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

Not unlike Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, a prequel, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, was released in 2003 to largely negative reviews from the popular media and a low box office income. It included only Lin Shaye from the original film's cast.

Sequel

On February 28, 2011, Bobby Farrelly revealed to Moviehole that a sequel to Dumb and Dumber will happen with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels reprising their roles as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, respectively. He goes on by saying, "[Dumb and Dumber] has run a bunch of times on TV in the states, and kids will come up and they’ll be able to quote lines from that – lines that I’ve long forgotten. If we could get those two guys back together, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels that might be a worthwhile sequel – and that ball is in motion. We’re starting to think about what those two dimwits would be doing twenty-years later in life, and hopefully we’ll be able to come up with something worthy of a sequel."

On October 26, 2011, it was announced that Sean Anders and John Morris had been hired to write the script. The two had co-written the Anders-directed Sex Drive and had recently co-directed the Adam Sandler comedy That's My Boy.

Soundtrack

Dumb and Dumber: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	November 22, 1994
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	46:51
Label	RCA

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 (Mary Moon)" 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 "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.

External links

• Dumb and Dumber at the Internet Movie Database
• Dumb and Dumber at AllRovi
• Dumb and Dumber at Box Office Mojo
• Dumb and Dumber at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dumb and Dumber at Metacritic
• Dumb & Dumber movie script