Friday, February 11, 2011

Rein-toon-ation: Dumb & Dumber (1995)

In the early to mid-90's, just about any movie Jim Carrey (ex-In Living Color) made was a bonafide box office hit. Three of them, "The Mask", "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective", & "Dumb & Dumber", were adapted into Saturday morning cartoons. Of those, The Mask went the route of Beetlejuice & Real Ghostbusters and had a weekday syndicated version produced along with the network show. Dumb & Dumber, the last of the three to make the transition, was also the last Hanna-Barbera series sold to ABC, which launched the program in October of 1995, as apparently there were some production delays that ultimately doomed the show.

In fact, in keeping with tradition, Carrey & Jeff Daniels didn't sign on for the cartoon, replaced by Matt Frewer (ex-Max Headroom) and Bill Fagerbakke (Coach, SpongeBob Squarepants), respectively. The cast also included Kathy Najimy (later of King of the Hill) and Bronson Pinchot (ex-Perfect Strangers). It should be noted that Fagerbakke was making his first inroads into toons at the time, as he was also moonlighting on Disney's acclaimed Gargoyles. Frewer had previously breathed new life into the iconic Pink Panther, but the weekday revival had done a quick fade due to lack of station interest.

Here's the intro:



Sadly, the series didn't have a long shelf-life, cancelled after 1 season. It did, however, start the trend of current cartoons celebrating general stupidity. As a comic plot device, that gets old real fast.

Rating: D.

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