Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd - 2003

"Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd" - 2003
Dir. by Troy Miller - 1 hr. 26 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I don't want to sidestep the fundamental issues surrounding "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd."  This is not a good movie.  This is nothing compared to it's predecessor.  Everything about this film screams "straight-to-video" so loudly that it's difficult to remember that it was, in fact, a theatrical release.  Having said all of that, it's also not nearly as bad as you'd have every right to think it ought to be.  I laughed, dammit, I laughed.

What we've got here is a prequel to the Farrelly brothers' smash hit, "Dumb and Dumber."  Whereas the original starred Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, and was riotously funny, I'm not sure there are any holdover actors from that film to this one.  This is a high-school movie, where Harry (Derek Richardson) meets Lloyd (Eric Christian Olsen), and are immediately recognized as the dolts that they are.  Principal Collins (Eugene Levy) and lunch-lady Ms. Heller (Cheri Oteri) hatch a plot to defraud the school district of $100k, which requires creating a "special needs class."  Resident smart hottie Jessica (Rachel Nichols) is on the hunt for a big story for the school newspaper, and smells something off about the special needs class.  Meanwhile, Harry mistakes Jessica's interest in his involvement in the class for genuine interest in him.

Shia LeBeouf may not be famous anymore, but he surely cashed his paycheck for his work on this film.  And, in fact, there are a bunch of people that you might recognize in this film, which is kind of weird.  Aside from Eugene Levy and Cheri Oteri, Mimi Rogers, Luis Guzman, Brian Posehn (for you comedian nerds out there) and Bob Saget all have small roles.  None of that adds up to a good reason to check "Dumb and Dumberer" out, but it's a nice bonus if you're already strapped in for the ride.  What there is here is a ton of really dumb humor, and if that's your cup of tea (admittedly, it is sometimes mine), there's some good material here.  The two stars do a decent job of aping the characters they're supposed to be, and their idiotic dialogue is decent.  But what the whole thing comes down to is this: I can't entirely hate a movie with this vehicle in it:

from the IMCDB

It's not just a short bus, it's the shortest bus!  And there's even a car chase involving it!  Look, this bus is far too awesome of an idea for a movie like this, and yet here it is, just sitting around being awesome in something that should have been a direct-to-video movie that everyone forgot about two days later.  It kind of makes me mad that such an awesome car is wasted on a project that's ceiling is honestly pretty low.  And, at the same time, should I find myself the recipient of a large jackpot, I'm getting one of these bad boys custom made, and driving the hell out of it.

There are other jokes that land in "Dumb and Dumberer," as well.  Again, I'm not going to pretend it's a good movie; it isn't.  But it seems to be more a victim of being a terrible idea (ie, a sequel in name only, including none of the talent that made the franchise's name in the first place) than being terribly executed, because it isn't that, either.  It's a solid dumb comedy, which isn't an oxymoron (you're an oxymoron!), there are some familiar faces, and if you don't hold it to the standard of "Dumb and Dumber," you might laugh, too.
2 / 5 - TV (HD)

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery - 1997

"Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" - 1997
Dir. by Jay Roach - 1 hr. 29 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

First, I acknowledge there is no way that anyone does, nor should care what I think about any of the "Austin Powers" movies.  For the record, I thought there were a number of funny bits, and it's been long enough since I'd seen it that the overexposure the franchise suffered from has eased a bit, and that it's popularity at the time makes sense - a bright, colorful, exuberant comedy against the somewhat monochromatic and dour nineties makes for a out-of-left-field hit.  And that even when Elizabeth Hurley isn't very good at acting, she's still a lot of fun to look at.

Part of the reason why no one would or should care about what anyone (I'm not singling myself out here) has to say about this film is that it was, at one point, inescapable.  Now, it's a few movies back on the list of giant comedies that every dolt quoted and ruined , to the point where I'm not even sure that people talk about Austin Powers any more.  Even Mike Myers has had another franchise ("Shrek") come and go since the three "Austin Powers" films.  You'd have to admit that both "Anchorman" and "Borat" have come and gone, displacing all the "yeah, baby" interjections with other non sequiturs.  At this point in time, though, if you weren't around for these movies, you might not have any awareness of them, and certainly not as the cultural phenomenons that they were.

That leaves the first "Powers" in an odd spot; most people who have seen it are sick of it, and those who haven't might as well be confronted with a weird indie film that no one wants to talk about.  I remember reading an interview with Outkast's Big Boi, talking about how weird it was that during the 1980's, you couldn't avoid Billy Ocean, but in the 2000's, he didn't exist any more.  It's that kind of phenomenon, where something goes from ubiquity to being in a weird blind spot that no one will acknowledge any more.

To be certain, the reputation of this film suffered at the hands of a pair of increasingly awful sequels that rode the comedic formulas from this film directly into the ground.  But this film is still okay.  There's a kind of comfort that comes from watching "Austin Powers," like listening to a radio hit from the past, and finding that you still know all the words years later.  There are no surprises, but it's comfort food, for when you don't want to be challenged.  It probably sucks to reduce a creative work to that, but if you weren't paying attention for the five years the film series comprised, you can't fathom how much this character was jammed down everyone's throats.  The series went from some weird film by an SNL refugee that blew up to something that companies were lining up to use to sell whatever crap they wanted to sell.  That journey, the one from outlier to corporate shill, that's the story that's most interesting about the character, especially with the benefit of not having to live contemporaneously with these films and their surrounding hype anymore.

3 / 5 - TV (HD)