There’s merit to the idea of stars aging and eventually losing sight of what their fans want. Which is why Arnold Schwarzenegger opted for “The Governator” and “Cry Macho” as potential comeback projects, or Sean Connery signing on to something like “The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen” despite claiming to not understand a single word of the script. While Jim Carrey might not be as old as these people, he is threatening to take the path of Harrison Ford, which is to do a bunch of indifferent middlebrow studio films that no one cares for, and then return to a beloved character decades too late. With Ford “Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull” paid off, but we aren’t expecting the same fortune to smile on another tired Jim Carrey sequel.
Doing press for the intolerable-looking kiddie picture “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” Carrey revealed his questionable future career plans. “We’re talking about maybe returning to some old characters that everyone has been asking about,” says Carrey, confusing “people” with “his bellboy,” who is clearly just humoring him. “There’s ‘Bruce Almighty‘ and we’re talking about maybe another ‘Dumb and Dumber‘.” This wouldn’t be a terrible idea, and the studios agreed, which is why both of those films had second installments. “Evan Almighty” starred Steve Carell and grossed $100 million domestically, though the reported cost was astronomical, while “Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd” was a school-age prequel that won no support from critics or audiences.
That said, earlier this year Bobby Farrelly did say “the ball is in motion” on a proper ‘Dumber’ sequel, so presumably Carrey has been tossing ideas around with his old pals. But it sounded fairly preliminary at best with the director saying, “[Dumb and Dumber] has run a bunch of times on TV in the states, and kids will come up and they’ll be able to quote lines from that – lines that I’ve long forgotten. If we could get those two guys back together, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels that might be a worthwhile sequel – and that ball is in motion. We’re starting to think about what those two dimwits would be doing twenty years later in life, and hopefully we’ll be able to come up with something worthy of a sequel.”
Carrey, who isn’t signed on to any post-‘Popper’ projects, so whether or not either of these become his next go-to seems unlikely for now. While “Bruce Almighty” was a mega-hit, it’s not exactly beloved amongst his fans, and there’s nowhere that he or his usual collaborators (a murderer’s row of nimrods that includes Tom Shadyac and Steve Odekerk) could take the material. “Dumb And Dumber” might make more sense, but again, you’d be dealing with morons in their fifties, which isn’t really funny anymore, just kind of sad. Though we’ll sign up for a trainwreck mashup of “Dumb And Dumber” and “Patch Adams” from Shadyac if it meant Lars Von Trier could tackle “Bruce Almighty III.”