Dumb and Dumber To (2014) * 1/2

Directed by:  Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly

Starring:  Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Kathleen Turner, Rachel Melvin, Laurie Holden

Twenty years after the release of the original, along comes Dumb and Dumber To.     This is yet another sequel we weren't exactly pining for, but the Farrelly brothers gave it to us anyway.     I enjoyed the first film.     It had plenty of inspired laughs, including a scene where blind Billy in 4C is sold a bird with its head duct taped on.     Dumb and Dumber mixed highbrow and lowbrow humor quite nicely.     The sequel starts low and stays there.   

Harry (Daniels) and Lloyd (Carrey) are back and still as dumb as a box of rocks.    Lloyd has spent the last twenty years in a catatonic state after failing to land the girl of his dreams in the first film.    Harry visits him only to learn to his relief that Lloyd's catatonia was part an elaborate hoax.     Don't ever say these guys won't go to absurd lengths to amuse themselves, if not us.    Lloyd soon finds he needs a new kidney and learns he has a long-lost daughter.    Lloyd insanely thinks she would be a willing kidney donor, but upon meeting her, you wonder if she wasn't already a brain donor.

The guys wind up in the middle of a plot involving the daughter's stepfather who is slowly being poisoned by his gold-digging wife and her lover.     It adds story to the film, but not interest.    A lot of Harry and Lloyd's interaction involves hitting each other and playing mean pranks.     There is no real friendship there, unlike the first film, where it is apparent they are brothers from another mother.     The guys' much discussed former girlfriend Fraida Felcher (Turner) shows up as well.    Jennifer Lawrence filmed flashback scenes as the young Fraida, but they were deleted at her request.    She seems to understand the idea of self-preservation in Hollywood.     The other actors willingly kept their scenes in.

Carrey and Daniels are accomplished actors who did not need to make this sequel.    I'm sure they were paid nicely and wanted to work together again.     They made the film, perhaps got all of that out of their system, and hopefully they will see no need to make a third installment.     It is baffling how the sequel manages to leave out all of the qualities that made the first film a comic gem.     Dumb and Dumber To has very few laughs.    Lord knows how much the guys are trying their hardest to pull them out of us.     A lot of the slapstick, including one character ripping another's catheter out, is painful and not funny.     If you spend more time grimacing than laughing, the movie isn't working as intended.

Jeff Daniels is among the most dependable of actors.    Jim Carrey has proven he can be effective and even brilliant (see The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) when he is not playing a "Jim Carrey" role.     The actors stay within their characters in this film, much like the first film, but Dumb and Dumber To leaves them with little to do.     They almost seem to be trying to force laughs out of the dim script.    Carrey used to have to do that back in his Ace Ventura days, but I figured those days were long gone.     The Farrellys made a film that owed more to The Three Stooges (2012) than the original film or their better works.     This is not a good thing.