'Dumb and Dumber To' review: Die-hard fans will be pleased

Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels and the Farrelly brothers have aged 20 years since "Dumb and Dumber," their 1994 comedy about two dimwits sailing through life on a sea of their own bodily fluids. The good and bad news about their long-awaited reunion, "Dumb and Dumber To," is that maturity hasn't caught up with any of them.

"Dumb and Dumber" was such a hit that a prequel and Hanna-Barbera cartoon series followed, though the principals weren't closely involved. Those projects tanked, proving that there was some ineffable magic in the combination of Carrey as the bowl-cut, chip-toothed Lloyd Christmas; Daniels as the frizzy-haired Harry Dunne; and writer-directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly ("There's Something About Mary"), whose sense of humor is essentially The Three Stooges with flatulence.

The original film was a series of set pieces hung on a flimsy caper-plot, a formula as old as the Marx Brothers and Crosby-Hope. In the sequel, Harry learns that he has a daughter, Penny (Rachel Melvin), who has been adopted by the eminent Dr. Pinchelow (Steve Tom). Kathleen Turner plays Penny's aging tramp of a mother, Fraida Felcher (a subplot from the first film), while the dependable Rob Riggle ("21 Jump Street") does fine work as an exasperated villain. All you really need to know, however, is that this movie includes jokes about colostomy bags, blind people and masturbation.

Like it or not, the Farrellys' most famous creations tap into something eternal, a vision of maleness so reductive that it goes beyond childish and into the infantile. (Career adolescents like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill look like pipe-smoking professors by comparison.) Much of this film's humor hinges on our heroes' arrested sexual development: They're fixated on breasts but ignorant about actual intercourse. "Not my mom!" Lloyd hollers when it's finally explained to him. Whether you find this hilarious or slightly disturbing is purely subjective.

Carrey is as energetic and rubber-faced as ever, while Daniels has improved, vying for co-star status instead of playing the straight man. Still, Harry and Lloyd remain less than endearing. Like very young children, they're slightly mercenary and malicious. Maybe that's the secret to their success.