Classic Comedies: Dumb and Dumber

"If I know her well as I think I do, she'll invite us right in for tea and strumpets". That is one of the hidden gem jokes that makes for one of the great comedies of all time.

Up until 1994, the name Jim Carrey was virtually unknown to the world. He had starred in a couple of sitcoms that had mixed reviews and had a few appearances on the Letterman show. Jeff Daniels on the other hand was a relatively famous name, mostly due to his wonderful performance perceived from Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and other roles in Arachnophobia, Checking out and Love hurts. Suddenly, Jim Carrey scored big with back to back comedy hits Ace Ventura and The Mask, and Jeff Daniels also scored big in the action thriller Speed. Shortly after, both of them found themselves reuinted under the firstt Farrelly Brother's movie: a comedy that tells the adventures of two friends travelling cross-country America called, Dumb and Dumber.

There is not a single serious moment in Dumb and Dumber. Right from the get go you can tell you are on for a product of genius and endless creativity. The first lines features Jim Carrey's character "Lloyd Christmas", confusing a woman's Austrian accent with an Australian accent. After she dumps him, we get to see the initial credits: "New Line Cinema PREZENTS", "In ASSOCIASHUN with Motion Picture Corporacion of America". Geez, not even the opening credits are taken seriously!

The plot consists of Lloyd travelling across the country to Aspen (California??) with his friend Harry, in order to return a briefcase left at Rhode Island's airport to Mary Swanson -a one time passenger of Lloyd's limo driver part time job-. The rest of the movie is a series of hillarious situations that feature selling of a dead parakeet, picking up of peruvian hitchhikers, freezing your tongue against a ski-cart, accidental murder of a mob hitman, killing an owl with a champagne corch, borrowing thousands of Dollars in exchange of "I OWE YOU" notes and let's not forget "the most annoying sound in the world".

It his hard to pick who is the Dumb and who is the Dumber, and it's even harder to pick who is the brain in this entire operation -if you can call it that way-. Although there are brief flashes of clever actions, the overall common sense and rationality of the two characters is just way below any known psycological standards. One of many memorable scenes has Lloyd exiting one of these 24 hour gas station quick stores and saluting a couple of ... let's say "unfriendly people", with the expression "hey guys, BIG GULPS HUH??!".

Which takes me to the opening joke of my blog. Once the two characters make it to Aspen, Lloyd suggests to get busy and deliver the case to Mary, because according to him ""If I know her well as I think I do, she'll invite us right in for tea and strumpets". I was a kid when I watched the movie and I remember thinking something like "did he just say tea and trumpets? what in the world does that mean?" Years later I found out about the "tea and strumpets" and now today I consider it the most overlooked, underestimated, and of course, the best joke in the entire film.

After D&D, the Farrelly Brothers kept making successful movies, gaining a huge fanbase world wide. However in my opinion, none of the movies were able to surpass the brilliant display we saw in Dumb and Dumber. A sequel has been announced in the next years, with Carrey and Daniel reprising their roles and it makes me wonder what kind of dead animal will Lloyd end up selling this time.