So dumb it's fun

By Eleanor O'sullivan
The Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

DUMB AND DUMBERER: WHEN HARRY MET LLOYD (Rated PG-13) Two and One-Half Stars (Fair-to-Good) Eric Christian Olsen has Jim Carrey's comic swish down pat and Derek Richardson does a good job as Olsen's straight man in this prequel to the idiotic hit "Dumb and Dumber" that made Carrey a superstar. Also stars Cheri Oteri, Eugene Levy and Rachel Nichols. Directed by Troy Miller. New Line, 90 minutes.

A prequel to the 1994 idiocy hit, "Dumb & Dumber" (which cemented Jim Carrey's star ascendancy), this follow-up film is so willfully amateurish — the film stock is washed-out and white and the sound falters again and again — that it's comically enjoyable.

Think of "Dumb and Dumberer" as a downgraded "Wayne's World." Can you imagine?

Scenario-wise, best to leave it at this: It's the story of how life-challenged Lloyd (Eric Christian Olsen) and Harry (Derek Richardson) literally bump into each other, become fast friends and pal around together in a series of ridiculous (but often amusing) adventures while in high school, circa 1986.

A subplot, which has the dandy Eugene Levy to carry it, involves the high school principal planning to embezzle $100,000 from a state education fund so he can finance a getaway condo in Hawaii for him and his girlfriend, who's the school "lunch lady." The plot involves placing Lloyd and Harry in a bogus special-needs class at the school.

A sub-sub plot has a beautiful and smart student smelling a rat about the embezzlement so she befriends the moronic boys so she can get to the bottom of the smelly scam. You see, Lloyd's father (Luis Guzman) is the school janitor, so he has keys to the principal's office.

Why is "Dumb and Dumberer" funny? It's totally lacking in pretension, rarely gross and the actor playing a younger Lloyd is a Carrey clone. Olsen masterfully mimics Carrey's swivel-hipped swishy walk, his brazenly stupid off-handed manner and his beyond-goofy guffaws. The movie opens with Olsen copying Carrey's loose-limbed dexterity in tour de farce gymnastics in a school hallway. That sets us up for pretty good things, and often, we're not disappointed.

As the pre-Jeff Daniels character, Harry, Richardson lacks Daniels' cluelessness and wonderment at anything that moves. Richardson is a good straight man to Olsen's hyperactivity, and he doesn't get in the way much, which is a good thing. Levy and "Saturday Night Live" alumna Cheri Oteri, as the lunch lady, get a terrific Burns and Allen rhythm going, and Rachel Nichols, playing the student who smells a rat, is party to a running "sweater girl" gag that bears your attention.

All in all, "Dumb and Dumberer" (which should have been called "Dumb & Dumb" since it's a prequel) is a slap-happy time at the movies, if you enter with bottom-feeder expectations.

Rated PG-13 for language and crude, sex-related humor.