In ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ the Smartest Money Is on the Easy Laughs

In “Dumb and Dumber,” dimwitted pals Lloyd and Harry (Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, respectively) , are mistaken for shrewd thieves when they travel to Aspen to return an unopened briefcase of ransom money to a beautiful heiress. (Rated PG-13).

*

With this, his third movie, TV comedian Jim Carrey has launched another home run with kids ($16.2 million when it debuted last weekend), aiming once again right for their funny bone: physical comedy, bathroom and genital jokes and his own trademark facial caricature.

“I thought it was one of Jim Carrey’s best movies,” said Jason Glitz, 14.

One reason, he added, is that it seemed longer than “The Mask,” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”

“This one had more comedy,” agreed his friend Lucas Avalos, 13. “It was better than ‘Ace Ventura.’ ”

Both boys thought Jeff Daniels added an extra funny dimension as Carrey’s sidekick, a pet groomer who used up his life savings to make his van look like a sheep dog. Besides providing foils for each other, they also have a serious friendship with a history. Harry and Lloyd, a limo driver, live together in Providence, R.I., and dream of opening a worm store there.

Harry knows that Lloyd once stole an old high school sweetheart, but agrees to trek after the heiress, whom Lloyd met when he gave her a ride in his limo. Lloyd is in love and doesn’t want a life alone.

“In ‘Ace Ventura,’ he was just himself,” Lucas said. “This one, he had someone with him the whole time. They both did well together.”

But his favorite scene was vintage Carrey--a karate parody dream sequence in which Lloyd twirls, kicks, and makes slicing sounds through the air (bowl haircut, chipped tooth and all) to defend the heiress against the advances of a waiter in a restaurant. (Parents of young children be warned: At the end, he plunges his fist into his enemy’s chest and pulls out his still-beating heart. Special effects make it look real.)

Politically incorrect throughout, the movie is also salted with bikini-clad sex objects, references to hooters and the death of a rare and endangered owl killed by a popped champagne cork. One gag, however, that didn’t get many laughs involved Lloyd’s selling a dead parakeet to a blind boy.

Christy Carlsson, 12, said that all things considered, “I thought ‘The Mask’ was funnier.”

Even so, she laughed--particularly in the scene when Harry innocently tries to taste the frost on the chair lift and his tongue becomes stuck to the frozen bar.

Boys in the audience laughed the loudest at a gross and literal bathroom scene, precipitated when Lloyd, angered by Harry’s advances to the heiress, slips him an overdose of laxative.

On the other hand, there’s also some clever word play by the two nitwits, who never get their vocabulary quite right. Harry complains about receiving a “John Deere” letter from his girlfriend. Lloyd hopes the heiress invites them in “for tea and strumpets” and wishes she would view him as “rich and good looking with a rapist wit.”

In the end, the movie served mostly to prime Jason and Lucas for a fourth Carrey film. Next time, they said, they hoped he continues to portray the serious emotional side of his characters.

Said Lucas: “When he is trying to be serious, it makes it more funny.”