Cinemazlowski 'Dumb and Dumber To' and 'Foxcatcher' make for a dull weekend at the movies

Nov 14, 2014

There’s something to be said about the innate human desire to be a champion that can make a story truly compelling. It can go across any arena, whether it’s trying to be a top movie star or an Olympic wrestling champion, and this weekend two new movies illustrate that fact in vastly different ways.

“Dumb and Dumber To” is the bigger release, hitting theaters everywhere with the return of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels to the roles of Harry and Lloyd, two outright idiots whose misadventures were first thrust upon the world 20 years ago in “Dumb and Dumber.” That movie helped cement Carrey’s comedic superstardom, coming at the end of a whirlwind year in which he had also scored blockbuster box office with “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “The Mask,” while showing audiences another side of Daniels, who had largely been a dignified dramatic actor in classy films like “Terms of Endearment.”

The first “Dumb” followed the guys on a cross-country quest, and the sequel follows the same formula. In this movie, Lloyd (Carrey) reveals he has been playing an elaborate prank on Harry (Daniels) by pretending to be in a near-catatonic state for 20 years at a mental hospital where Harry attends to all his needs, including in the bathroom, during weekly visits.

With Lloyd awake and admitting his prank, Harry reveals that he needs a new kidney or will die. Lloyd refuses to help him as a donor, and Harry feels all is lost to find a matching blood type until he receives word that he has an adult daughter he’s never known about. Lloyd sees her photo and is instantly smitten, so he agrees to join Harry on a cross-country quest to find her.

Now, that’s just the bare-bones plot of this movie, and let’s face it, there’s not much more to be added in the form of story structure or any intelligent motivation for the characters. What the movie is packed with is gross, raunchy, and scatological jokes that are occasionally funny in spite of themselves but which can barely be described in a setting with families and other religious readers like this one. Suffice to say, if you’re reading this site regularly, “Dumb and Dumber To” is certain to offend you deeply.

While this movie is a shameless attempt to grab cash from a new generation of dumb-comedy fans and the nostalgia of viewers approaching middle age, this time around it’s more pathetic than funny to see the levels to which Carrey and Daniels will lower themselves to for a laugh. What might have seemed funny in spite of itself 20 years ago when they were up and coming actors in their early 30s now can often feel unsettling when these actors are in their 50s. Truly, one can’t help but wonder is there anything they won’t’ do to make a buck and be popular again?

On the other hand, “Foxcatcher” is hardly a winner either, despite its own themes of winning and losing. Set in the boom years of the Reagan presidency in the mid-1980s, it follows the bizarre true story of wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), a decidedly lower-class guy who dreams of making the US Olympic wrestling team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Mark is trained by his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), a somewhat older family man who transfers his own quashed desires to make it in wrestling onto Mark. He pushes him hard and has an odd habit of slapping Mark in the face repeatedly when he’s trying to fire him up, which underscores a strange tension between them.

Then one day Mark gets a mysterious phone call from a minion of multimillionaire John DuPont, who is one of the idle rich heirs to the biggest family fortune in America. DuPont, played by Steve Carell wearing a big prosthetic nose that’s distracting throughout the movie, is an obsessed yet oddly serene wrestling fan who flies the malleable Dave out for a secret visit to his rural estate.

There, he makes Mark an offer he can’t refuse. Showing him the insanely elaborate gym he has constructed to train wrestlers, DuPont he tells Mark that he wants to be his sponsor and asks him what kind of financial arrangements he needs to train full time for a year. Mark’s utter cluelessness about anything other than wrestling shines through when he excitedly tells Dave he “thought of the highest number I could think of — $25,000.”

Soon, Mark is immersed in the bizarre bubble of existence that surrounds DuPont due to his life of privilege, and eventually he drags Dave into it too as DuPont hires Dave to coach him at the family compound. But in a classic case of be careful what you wish for, the clash between Dave and DuPont over Mark’s mind, body and spirit leads the trio down some very twisted turns.

Now, this may sound intriguing, and the real-life story behind it all is indeed riveting to read. But somehow, it doesn’t work as a movie. “Foxcatcher” has an oddly disconnected tone throughout its very lengthy running time, as director Bennett Miller (“Capote,” and the much better “Moneyball”) keeps his characters inscrutable and emotionally frozen to the point which much of the movie feels like a pretentious slog that takes forever to get to its depressing conclusion.

The three leads all try their best, but Tatum, Ruffalo and Carell are playing characters so unsympathetic that it’s hard to care what happens to them. Wearing his ridiculous prosthetic nose and speaking in an annoyingly low-key clip, Carell appears to be shouting out “I’m a Serious Actor!” from start to finish, while Tatum’s Mark is clueless to the point of annoyance and Ruffalo’s Dave is an amped-up jerk.

There’s not much if any foul language in “Foxcatcher,” which is surprising for an R-rated film, and there’s no sex or prurient nudity in it. The movie is rated R for a scene in which DuPont starts to get Mark hooked on illegal drugs, and for a surprising act of violence.

“Foxcatcher” is drawing raves from most critics, but my gut tells me that the general public will find it too cold to care about. It’s a classic example of a film that tries so hard to enlighten us that it forgets to entertain us as well.