--- title: Dumb and Dumber Review: What We Said in 1994 description: "Whole lot of stupidity going on at the movies these days" canonical: https://time.com/3579470/dumb-and-dumber-review/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-14T12:00:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T11:22:27.613Z article:section: History og:title: What TIME said about the first 'Dumb and Dumber' movie og:description: "Whole lot of stupidity going on at the movies these days" og:url: https://time.com/3579470/dumb-and-dumber-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f8bcffe617481ec/698768458e06014d0045882f/dumbdumber.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Dumb and Dumber To og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What TIME said about the first 'Dumb and Dumber' movie twitter:description: "Whole lot of stupidity going on at the movies these days" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f8bcffe617481ec/698768458e06014d0045882f/dumbdumber.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # _Dumb and Dumber_ Won, Revisited  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 14, 2014 12:00 PM UTC  Jim Carrey, left, and Jeff Daniels in a scene from "Dumb and Dumber To." Jim Carrey, left, and Jeff Daniels in a scene from "Dumb and Dumber To."Hopper Stone—Universal Pictures / AP Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 14, 2014 12:00 PM UTC The sequel to _Dumb and Dumber_ arrives in theaters Nov. 14, but when the original came out on Dec. 6 of 1994 it didn’t merit a review in the pages of TIME. And, about a month later, when it finally got a write-up, it didn’t exactly need the praise: it had opened at number one and became the sixth-highest grossing movie of the year in the United States. It had already proved that it could make, [as TIME’s critic Richard Schickel put it,](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,982291,00.html) “gross-out grosses.” The movie wasn’t trying to be sophisticated (in fact, the opposite) but, he wrote, “_D and D_ — in comparison with which Jim Carrey’s other pictures look as if they were scripted by Oscar Wilde — makes you laugh out loud for almost its entire running time.” The vindication continued. In March of 1995, Schickel [returned to the subject](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,982623,00.html) of _Dumb and Dumber_, and found that its power didn’t stop at the box-office. Rather, the movie was part of a trend. “Whole lot of stupidity going on at the movies these days, which is not altogether unusual,” Schickel wrote. “What’s different is that dumbness is so often a film’s subject, not merely the prime cause of its being made.” Though commentators at the time found such movies — also including _Billy Madison_ and _The Brady Bunch Movie_ — reason to cringe, audiences appeared to have no such qualms. And, naturally, neither did movie producers who, spurred initially by the success of _Wayne’s World_, rushed to churn out the dumbness. But it turned out that not everything about those movies was dumb. “If dumbness is a large part of our problem” as a society, Schickel argued, seeing how stupid it was to be stupid could make us all a little bit smarter. **_Read the full story here, in TIME’s archives:_** [Sons of _Wayne’s World_](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,982623,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3579470/dumb-and-dumber-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3579470/dumb-and-dumber-review/"},"headline":"Dumb and Dumber Won, Revisited","datePublished":"2014-11-14T12:00:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T11:22:27.613Z","description":"\"Whole lot of stupidity going on at the movies these days\"","url":"https://time.com/3579470/dumb-and-dumber-review/","keywords":["movies","Jim Carrey"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f8bcffe617481ec/698768458e06014d0045882f/dumbdumber.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f8bcffe617481ec/698768458e06014d0045882f/dumbdumber.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Dumb and Dumber To","caption":"Dumb and Dumber To","creditText":"Hopper Stone—Universal Pictures / AP Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3579470/dumb-and-dumber-review/","name":"Dumb and Dumber Won, Revisited"}}]}] ```