Top Comedies #4: Don't judge me, I was 14 when this came out.

 In the business driven movies of the 80s, comedies followed a few basic, formulaic guidelines. There was usually a wise-cracking hero and a woman who, by being generally inaccessible, motivates him to overcome an antagonist. The hero, despite his outward lack of seriousness or even physical fitness, is smart and competent. The antagonist is borrowed from another genre, be it horror (Ghostbusters), mystery/noir (Fletch), or even silent films (UHF). Sure there were other formulas, including a whole subgenre of Animal House inspired underachievers beat the jocks movies. But this goofball-saves-the-day plot was used so much, and so consistently, that in the 90s, comedies like Wayne's World were essentially parodies of this structure. It is assumed that the hero and the unattainable woman would get together, so the obstacles are really just jokes about other movies. The villains become even more exaggerated. And the heroes don't even have to demonstrate any real competence to win in the end. Dumb and Dumber may not actually be one of these parodies, though it can't be understood without reference to them. It has all the elements of a meta-cinematic deconstruction of a movie like Stripes but, in my opinion, it lacks the pretense necessary to be a comment on anything.

I am not entirely certain it is one of the top comedies of all time, much less a good movie. But seeing that I first experienced it on my fourteenth birthday, and it was written and directed by the Farrelly Brothers, who, despite the fact that this movie is now nineteen years old, might in fact still be fourteen themselves, I think that its place here is acceptable, if not justifiable.

Several years after its release, in an appearance on the Late Show, while discussing his early career, Jeff Daniels explained a decision he made (I forget about what) by saying that he was young, and he was an artist. Letterman asked him how long that lasted. Daniels' reply: "Till about Dumb and Dumber." The razor sharp production staff retrieved a clip of Daniels' toilet scene and showed it several times before the show ended. And he was right. It isn't a serious movie.

Dumb and Dumber borrows the worn out comedy plot of the 80s to do nothing more than what movies in the 80s did with it. It lays out a strange sequence of events, in this case borrowed from crime movies (the movie is actually about a kidnapping), and uses it to do nothing more than provide various situations in which the heroes can make us laugh, in this case as they embarrass themselves on screen. They have been so stripped of competence that they can't even win accidentally, and the kidnapping plot is wrapped up largely despite their presence, even though Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) works with the FBI temporarily at the end. He isn't a mole though, or an informant. He really isn't bait either, even though that is the explanation the FBI agent provides. He was just simply there to bicker with Lloyd (Jim Carrey), fail to overcome the villain, and ultimately risk dying for nothing, or at least for something that he doesn't understand.

In the end, the heroes don't win the girl (Lloyd actually fantasizes about killing the kidnap victim he just failed to save). In fact, they are worse off than when they started, having gotten stuck in the Western US without the dog themed van that Harry had spent his life savings decorating. The movie is utterly pointless. It is, nevertheless, also hilarious. Its jokes aren't directed at anything other than itself. And it is its total lack of pretentiousness that propels these jokes toward their target.

This isn't my fourth favorite comedy. I just gave it this spot to cover it and move on. It is my guilty pleasure. I could, at one point recite it from beginning to end. From Lloyd using the limo he chauffeurs to pretend he is an important doctor so he can hit on what can only be described as a supermodel waiting for public transportation, to Lloyd and Harry playing tag right after having given up the only lucky break they come across in the movie, and all the dead parakeets in between. I could have easily described it as my favorite movie at one point, but then I finally left adolescence. But I'll never forget where I come from. And no matter how much I enjoy the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, Dumb and Dumber will always remind me not to take things too seriously.