One of my favorite things about the word stupid is its emphatic sound. Starting with the hissing of the "S", leading into the pop of the "T", followed by the loud and goofy "oo" sound, only to come to a complete stop at "P". The "id" is kind of an epilogue I guess. Shania Twain tells us, "Don't be stupid," yet Weird Al Yankovic dares to be stupid. What's a guy to do?

Well, Jim Carrey's acting has always, at least to me, been a kind of attempt to merge "stupid" with "funny". For some people, the results are devastatingly hilarious. For others, they are devastatingly annoying. To me, he's hilarious. Most of the time.

The thing about Dumb & Dumber is not so much that Jim Carrey is not funny. It's that Jeff Daniels completely blows him away. Jeff Daniels just looks funnier. He's got the dumb look. The shaggy hair, the play-doh face, the prominent ridge from nose to upper lip. Jim Carrey, on the other hand, looks like some dorky college boy who should be working in a corner office.

So the two guys live together in an apartment. Jeff Daniels' character, Harry, is a dog groomer, and Jim Carrey, playing Lloyd, works as a limo driver. Lloyd falls for a girl Mary (Lauren Holly) while driving her to the airport. When she leaves her briefcase at the airport, Lloyd retrieves it, brings it home, and convinces Harry to drive him to Aspen to return it to her. What they don't realize is that the briefcase contains two million dollars, and that Mary left it at the airport on purpose as a ransom payment. So now the ransom collectors are chasing after Lloyd & Harry. When they finally get to Aspen, they happen to find out what's inside the briefcase, and off they go on a spending spree. Eventually, they meet up with Mary and the gang, and that's when the fit hits the shan. That's about the extent of it as far as plot goes, and I don't mind giving it all away because if you're renting or buying DND for plot, you just took the wrong off-ramp.

The humor of DND is not all potty humor, as you might think. Jim Carrey pees in a beer bottle and a cop drinks it. Later, he spikes his buddy's drink with Poopto-Bismol, and we get to see a very violent toilet scene. Otherwise, much of the humor is in the dialogue itself. Carrey & Daniels manage to exercise enough restraint that it doesn't look like they are trying to be funny. Mike Starr is surprisingly funny as Joe, one of the ransom collectors. He looks like a rugged, older and slightly skinnier version of John Goodman, and he is awesome.

There are parts where Lloyd and Harry actually display genuine emotion. What's scary is that it's enough to make you care about them and sympathize with them, no matter how dumb they are. But I guess it could also be argued that you sympathize with them because they are dumb.

One of the best things about DND is its music. Everything from The Cowsills' "The Rain, The Park, And Other Things" to the Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm", really adds a flavorful twist to the punch.

When it comes right down to it, I like DND. Doesn't mean that if I were recommending movies to a friend, that it would be among the first ten (or fifty) that I would suggest. Yeah, it's funny, and it doesn't claim to be anything beyond that. I guess it's just that lately I look for a point, and DND doesn't really have one. So I'm going up the middle with 2 1/2 stars, rounded up to 3 for the music.

If you want a funny Jeff Daniels movie, get Dumb & Dumber.
If you want a funny Jim Carrey movie, get Liar Liar.

Top eleven Dumb & Dumber quotes (the short version)

11.) "Nice set of hooters you got there."
10.) "Your hands are freezing!"
9.) "Right on my ^ss, after you kiss it!"
8.) "What, that? No. Yes. No, well, no, I, it crossed my mind. Yes."
7.) "Watch the seat, watch the seat!"
6.) "Whoa, look at the bunbags on that hosehound."
5.) "No it was a girl."
4.) "One time, we successfully mated a bulldog and a shih tzu. Yeah, we called it a bullsh!t."
3.) "She gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her enough or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention."
2.) "Man, you are one pathetic loser!"
1.) "Gas man. How the hell do they know that I got gas?"

Top ten funniest parts (try to find 'em if you feel like it)

10.) Lloyd uses ketchup to make his shaver think he got cut.
9.) Harry slapping himself repeatedly in the face.
8.) The way Harry smiles at the cop after handing over his license.
7.) The upside down shot of Lloyd after the jetway fall.
6.) You're waiting for Joe to eat the hamburger, and he just sits there holding it an inch from his mouth and laughing.
5.) Lloyd looks back at Mary to talk to her while driving the limo and runs a red light.
4.) Lloyd's "gun scene" at the end. (It's so not me to like such a thing, but LMAO anyway...)
3.) The cop's reaction after drinking the pee.
2.) Jim Carrey's dance before he takes the guy's heart out.
1.) Jeff Daniels takes a dump. (Definitely the best "dump scene" I've ever seen!)

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older
Special Effects: Well at least you can't see the strings