ON 'DUMB AND DUMBER TO' and THE COMEDIC EFFECT OF EDITING

Editing is an important comedic tool. It's just as important as the actor or the dialogue, or the setting. In fact, I would rank it second in importance only to the script itself, although sometimes bad editing can make a great moment fall flat.

Suffice it to say that editing is real important.

I'm not saying that Dumb and Dumber To would be a good film if the editing were better (I'll get to what I mean soon), but it might have been decent. At least better than the nightmarish childhood-ruiner of a film I just watched.

Me, if I weren't sick and under the heavy influence of DayQuil.

And just to be clear, I'm critiquing this solely as a die-hard fan of the first film. These words come to you from the heart. I could tear this film apart, but I won't. With a film like this, there's just no point.

But I will say that aside from all the lowest-brow humor, the lame call-backs to old jokes, the sadness I felt every second while watching these two seasoned actors go through the motions (and in doing so, forget the purpose of the motions entirely) the editing was a serious problem.

So how can a cut be funny?

Of course you've got your standard cut-away-to-the-next-scene moments, which are crucial to the film's rhythm and can in-and-of themselves get laughs. But during the scenes, the answer is pretty counter intuitive. Think back to Dumb and Dumber, does the editing stand out as being funny? No. It's actually damn near invisible. To the unseasoned eye the editing in Dumb and Dumber To might seem invisible, but really it's employing very obvious techniques to get us to laugh. Why is this bad?

Because it's like holding up a cue card that says "laughter" to an unwilling audience.

Good editing is invisible, especially in comedy. Jokes must stand on their own. When you cut-in just before Lloyd delivers a funny line, not only are you essentially telling the audience "okay, here comes a joke, are you ready?" but you are manufacturing chemistry and demonstrating a certain lack of faith in said joke. And both these things spell certain comedic death.

This is why the best scene in Dumb and Dumber To is one when Harry, Lloyd, and That Bad Guy are driving in the hearse. The camera sticks to one angle for a good 30 seconds, and all three are in frame. We finally get to see the chemistry between them, hear the jokes on their own. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it's one of the very, very few moments where these characters feel like they are the least bit real.

Please, watch Dumb and Dumber again and look for the editing. What is it doing in the funniest scenes? In the dog car? At the rest-stop with the hot peppers? For the most part, it stays on one wide shot and let's the jokes and actor's chemistry do all the heavy lifting. Sure, there is a cut-in here and there, but it's always done in a subtle way, not to simply highlight a character's line, but maybe show a character's reaction or physicality. But DADT goes the other way all the damn time. The editing is constantly trying to let us in on the joke. It doesn't just not work, it makes everything worse.

As mentioned, there's a ton more to say. Like how Jeff Daniels seems to be doing some kind of weird slur and contorts his face to make himself look dumber (as if overcompensating for all his years of playing the straight-laced smart guy). Or how every other joke is related to poop, and no joke an attempt to dig deeper into these characters, only to poke fun at them. Or how both characters yell "show us your tits" during a science convention.

Strike 2 and 3.

Or how clumsily the plot is set up, even though it's a simple copy-and-paste job. Or how Lloyd's 20-ish-year mental breakdown is totally incongruous with the ending of the first film and just comes off as the writer's attempt to force in some humor at the beginning, while simultaneously avoiding the hard work of figuring out where these characters might have ended up after 22 years.

Or how, perhaps most importantly, it is completely void of the heart that made the original so great. Gone is the feeling that there may be some hope for these characters, or that they are, on some level, aware that their life is utter shit and actually unhappy under their blissfully ignorant exteriors.

And of course, there's always the simple fact that comedy sequels should never, ever be made, best illustrated here. But overall, I just want to get across two messages:

To filmmakers and writers of comedy: your jokes/characters should stand their own and demand that the editing get out of their way. They should always feel real, because even an idiot deserves a few layers.

And to Editors: your job isn't to construct moments, but to let moments happen.

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