Dumb & Dumber

Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 comedy film starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. It was directed by The Farrelly Brothers and was also written by the duo along with their friend Bennett Yellin. It is a modern example of slapstick comedy and gross-out humor. Since its release, the film has become what many consider a comedy classic and the source of countless humorous quotes. Dumb and Dumber contributed to the launch to stardom of Jim Carrey and set the foundation for many Farrelly Brothers films yet to come.

Background information

The film was made on an estimated $16 million budget, which was surpassed on the opening weekend. It grossed $127,175,354 in the United States, and $246,200,000 worldwide. The movie has amassed $63,600,000 in the USA on rentals.

Although the film did not come away with any major American motion picture awards, it was very successful at the MTV Movie Awards. Jim Carrey won for Best Comedic Performance, Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly won for Best Kiss, and Jim Carrey & Jeff Daniels were nominated for Best On-Screen Duo.

In 1995, a Hanna-Barbera produced animated spin-off aired on ABC, as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Matt Frewer provided the voice of Lloyd, while Bill Fagerbakke voiced the character of Harry.

Tagline: For Harry and Lloyd every day is a no-brainer.

Plot

Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne are two well-meaning, extremely unintelligent men who live together in their Providence, Rhode Island apartment, and are recently out of work. Prior to his firing, Lloyd drives Mary Swanson to the airport by limousine. He is immediately smitten and falls in love with her along the way. After entering the airport terminal, Mary sets a cash-filled briefcase in the middle of a terminal area in the airport before her departure to Aspen, Colorado. Upon seeing this, Lloyd rushes in to bring it to Mary, thinking she has forgotten it. What he does not know is that the briefcase was intentionally left behind because it contains ransom money for the man who had Mary's husband kidnapped.

Lloyd (after being fired from his job) returns to his apartment at the same time as the also-fired and equally dimwitted Harry. The two leave briefly to search for new jobs, but to no avail. After returning, Harry discovers his pet parakeet Petey has died due to his head "falling off". What actually happened was that the bird was murdered by Mary's husband's kidnappers, who tracked Lloyd back to his place. Between the death of the bird and Lloyd's booze being stolen by an elderly woman, the two decide to leave their troubles behind and start anew in Aspen. They also intend to return the briefcase to Mary and become a part of the town's social scene.

Harry and Lloyd trek westward across the country in hopes of finding Mary, encountering several misfortunes and adversaries along the way. Joe "Mental" Mentalino, one of the people hired by Mary's husband's kidnapper tries to foil Lloyd and Harry's plans around the time they get to the midwest. Mental's attempt to poison the two and steal the briefcase fails and winds up killing himself after the idiots mistakenly medicate him with rat poison.

Once the two arrive in Aspen, they realize that they are strapped for cash and have no place to stay. During a quarrel, they mistakenly break the case open to discover for the first time that the briefcase is filled with cash. Upon discovering this, they borrow a "moderate" amount of the money to buy elaborate clothes, a Lamborghini Diablo, and a very expensive hotel suite. They intend to pay the loans back with paper IOUs. Later in the visit, the two encounter Mary at a wildlife preservation benefit- only Harry is the one who talks and becomes friends with her. Lloyd discovers Harry's two-timing ways and sabotages his date with Mary by spiking tea with laxative, leading to a lengthy toilet scene by Jeff Daniels, a great example of toilet humor.

Lloyd and Harry continue to argue over who "gets" Mary, culminating in the kidnapping of all three by Mary's husband's kidnapper. The kidnapper turns out to be a close friend of the Swanson family. There is a brief standoff in the hotel room amongst the four, until FBI agents storm in and arrest the kidnapper. Mary's husband is returned to her (much to the dismay of Lloyd and Harry), and the two fools are left to find a way home for themselves. Along the way home, they inadvertently turn down a chance to be oil boys for bikini models, which was considered by many to be the most ignorant, dumbest thing they've done throughout the movie.

Dumb & Dumberer

A prequel, When Harry Met Lloyd was released in 2003 to largely negative reviews from the popular media, and a low box office income. Neither Carrey nor Daniels appears in this film.

Main characters

Lloyd Christmas is an illiterate, good-hearted man who has apparently been fired from several jobs due to his lack of intelligence, the most recent of which is working for a limo company. He falls in love with Mary while driving her to the airport and is destined to track her down, return her misplaced suitcase, and spend his future with her. He and Harry are the main characters.
Harry Dunne is a dog groomer, and best friend to Lloyd. What he lacks in common sense, he makes up for by being a superior linguist to Lloyd. He, along with Lloyd, plans to open up his own pet store to specialize in selling worm farms. The store is tentatively named "I Got Worms".
Mary Swanson is an attractive lady whose husband, Bobby, has been kidnapped by a family friend. She is the object of Lloyd and Harry's longing.

Secondary characters

Nicholas Andre is Mary Swanson's husband's kidnapper, as well as a long-time confidante of the Swanson family. He holds the husband for ransom as his plot is tarnished by Harry and Lloyd.
Joe Mentalino, a.k.a "Mental",aka "Gas-Man" is a cold-hearted criminal who works as a henchman for Nicholas Andre, the kidnapper. He attempts to kill Lloyd and Harry, as well as retrieve the briefcase, but is accidentally killed for his troubles. Although he is a man of below-average intelligence, he is still angered by the idiocy of Lloyd and Harry.
J.P. Shay is the female accomplice of Mental's. She appears as Nicholas's date at the wildlife benefit.
Beth Jordan is an FBI special agent and all-around blabbermouth. She befriends Lloyd in a bar as he expects to meet with Mary and meets Harry as they both fill up at a gas station. Neither Lloyd nor Harry know as they meet Beth that she works for the FBI.
Sea Bass is a very large, tough man, and is apparently an expert fisherman. He spits on Harry's hamburger after Harry accidentally hit him with a salt shaker at a roadside diner. Sea Bass was portrayed by National Hockey League star Cam Neely.' He was also in the Jim Carrey film Me, Myself and Irene named Sea Bass'' again and portrayed by Cam Neely.

Cast

Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas
Jeff Daniels as Harry Dunne
Lauren Holly as Mary Swanson
Mike Starr as Joe Mentalino
Charles Rocket as Nicholas Andre
Karen Duffy as J.P. Shay
Cam Neely as Sea Bass
Harland Williams as Pennsylvania State Trooper
Victoria Rowell as Beth Jordan
Teri Garr as Helen Swanson

Trivia

Jim Carrey's tooth really is chipped, he simply took off the cap for this role.
Ironically, one of Jeff Daniels's first acting roles was in a Pepto Bismol commercial.
A young Jonathan Brandis appears as the small child in the Pacific Bell commercial.
The hotel suite that Lloyd and Harry stay in is at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.
Jim Carrey refused to shoot an alternate ending of Harry and Lloyd getting on the bus with the girls, claiming that his character would be too dumb to do so.
The 'most annoying sound in the world' and 'we've landed on the moon!' lines were ad-libbed by Carrey.
Production in Salt Lake City, Utah was shut down due to Jim Carrey having gallstone surgery.
In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Dumb and Dumber the 15th greatest comedy film of all time.
Lloyd's hair cut in this film closely resembles that of Ish Kabibble, a popular comedian of the 1940s who performed with the Kay Kyser Orchestra. It has been suggested Kabibble may have been an influence on Lloyd, since his style was that of a rather slow-witted individual.
The "sheepdog van" was made out of a 1984 Ford Econoline.
In the Hungarian version, the characters are called Dumb Christmas and Dumber Dunn respectively.

Quotes

Harry: (With tongue frozen to a ski lift) "Say kids.. (dribbles) you wouldn't happen to have a cuppa warm water would ya?"

Lloyd: Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the medical school? I'm supposed to be giving a lecture in twenty minutes and my driver's a bit lost.
Young Woman: Go straight aheads and makes a left over za bridge.
Lloyd: That's a lovely accent you have. New Jersey?
Young Woman: Austria.
Lloyd: Oh! (chuckles, and puts on an Australian accent) Austria!? Well then. G'day, mate. Let's put another shrimp on the barbie!
Young Woman: Let's not.

Lloyd: (Talking to Mary in a limo) "So, why are you going to the airport? Flying somewhere?"
Mary: "Yeah, how'd you guess?"
Lloyd: "Well, I saw your bags and your airline ticket, so I put 2 and 2 together."

Harry: Skis, huh?
Beth: That's right.
Harry: Great. They yours?
Beth: (confused) Uh-huh.
Harry: Both of 'em?
Beth: (somewhat surprised) Yeah.
Harry: Cool!

Harry: What's in the briefcase?
Lloyd: Man, I would have to be a real lowlife to go rooting around in someone else's private property.
Harry: Is it locked?
Lloyd: Yeah, really well.

Flight Attendant: Sir, you can't go in there. (Telling Lloyd because the plane already left)
Lloyd: It's okay, I'm a limo driver. (Lloyd then falls off the skyway)

Lloyd: Maybe this friendship isn't worth a damn! Maybe we should call it quits right now.
Harry: You just tell me where to sign, bud.
Lloyd: Right on my ass after you kiss it!
(In a televised showing in the U.S., "ass" was censored and replaced with "sandwich")

Lloyd: (Talking about somewhere they can go) I'll tell you where. Some place warm. Where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talkin about a little place called 'Aspen'.
Harry: I don't know Lloyd, the French are assholes.

Harry: I don't know Lloyd, according to the map, we've only gone 4 inches.

Harry: (to Mary Swanson, but referring to a pair of endangered owls) That's a nice set of hooters you got there.

Harry: She gave me some crap about me not listening to her enough or something like that... I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.

Lloyd: (talking to a few gang members outside a 7 Eleven) "Hey guys, whoa Big Gulps, huh?....... Aaright! Welp, see ya later!"

Lloyd: Mary...what do you think the chances are of a girl like me and a guy like you ending up together?

Mary: (responding to Lloyd's question about the odds of the two ending up together) Wow Lloyd, that's difficult to say....
Lloyd: C'mon Mary, I came a long way just to see you, the least you can do is level with me.
Mary: Not good.
Lloyd: Not good like one out of a hundred?
Mary: I'd say more like one out of a million.
Lloyd: So you're telling me there's a chance! I read ya.

Lloyd: Husband!? What was all that one in a million talk?

Harry: Once we successfully managed to breed a bulldog with a shitzu.
Mary: Really? That's weird.
Harry: Yeah. We called it a bullshit.

Harry:(after they just ripped off Sea Bass at the restaurant)Lloyd you are a genius, where did you learn that from?
Lloyd:I saw it in a movie once.
Harry:So they ripped off some guy and then they just got away?
Lloyd:Haha no, the guy caught up with them about a half mile down the road and slit his throat. It was a good one!

Lloyd:Excuse me Flo?(the waitress)What's the soup du jour (French for soup of the day)?
Waitress:It's the soup of the day.
Lloyd:Hmmm.. Sounds good. I'll have that.

Lloyd: (as Harry spills the salt shaker in the resturant) Harry, you just spilled the salt! That's bad luck! The last thing that we need traveling across the country is bad luck.
Harry: (Throws the salt shaker over his shoulder and hits Sea Bass).
Sea Bass: Alright who's the dead man who threw the salt shaker!?

HarryWell, Petey is dead.
Lloyd:Well what happened?
Harry: His head fell off.
Lloyd: His head fell off!?
Harry: Yeah fell right off. He was pretty old though.
Lloyd: That's it. I've had it with this dump! We've got no food, we've got no jobs, OUR PETS HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!!

Harry We have looked all around Rhode Island and there is no jobs, nada, zip.
Lloyd: Yeah, unless you want to work 40 hours a week!

Harry (after they killed the 'gas-man') I can't believe it.
Lloyd: Yeah, lifes a fragile thing Harr. One minute your sitting there chewing on a hamburger and the next minute you're dead meat.
Harry: Yeah but he blamed me. Those were his last words.
Lloyd: Not if you count the gurgling sound.

Harry:(After Lloyd to a wrong turn going to Colorado and ended up in the Great Plains.) I figured the Rocky Mountians would be a little rockier than this?

Lloyd: I was thinking the same thing....that Jon Denver's full of SHIT Man!!

Harry: (Driving into Aspen) Hey, Lloyd can we stop somewhere so I can pee?
Lloyd: Just go man, just go. (Harry goes) Ooh its kinda warm.

Lloyd: (talking to the 'gas-man' after he asks for a ride) We don't usually pick up hitchhikers, but I'm gonna go with my instincts on this one. Saddle Up partner!

Harry: So you got fired again?
Lloyd: Yeah, they always freak out when you leave the scene of an accident you know? (referring to his accident at the airport)
Harry: Yeah well I got fired too.
Lloyd:Man you are one pathetic loser. No offense.
Harry: No, none taken.

External links

Dumb & Dumber Movie Script

1994 films | Buddy films | American films | Gross-out comedy films | Road movies

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