Box Office: ‘Dumb And Dumber To’ Takes The Top Spot

As we expected Dumb and Dumber To has topped the box office for the weekend. The Farrelly Brothers sequel, which put Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels back on screen together, pulled in an estimated $38.1 million at the box office. This number was well above the original estimation of $25 million.

This means we can probably expect studios to latch on to other ’90s films for a reboot or a sequel. Perhaps we’ll even see Dumb and Dumber To turn into a trilogy?

Although critics didn’t love Dumb and Dumber To, fans still crowded the theater to see the sequel that was 20 years in the making. That said, the film still doesn’t have a great critic’s score.

Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers gave the film one-and-a-half stars and writes, “If you think it’s infantile for Jim Carrey, 52, and Jeff Daniels, 59, to make a sequel to to the fabulously flatulent farce they made 20 years ago, you’d be right. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The bad news isn’t that Carrey and Daniels got old, it’s that the jokes did.”

While New York Magazine’s David Edelstein writes, “I reckon four out of every five jokes played to silence at the preview screening. If Dumb and Dumber To were a live comedian, he’d have said, ‘Is this an audience or an oil painting?’ He’d have left the stage in tears.”

Universal Pictures, the studio that helped bring Dumb and Dumber To to life, knows what kind of a life it would have with some critics. The head of Univeral distribution, Nikki Rocco, told the press about the film.

“What critic would like this movie? But who cares? From the first day I saw it, I knew it would be perfect entertainment. General audiences want to go to the movies and laugh – and there hasn’t been a real comedy in the marketplace since the summer.”

Box Office analyst for Rentrak also attributed Dumb and Dumber To’s success because of its nostalgia.

“They couldn’t have done it without reuniting the original cast,” he says, adding that “it’s the antidote to all these heavy award season movies that come out this time of year.”

As far as how the rest of the films stack up, Big Hero 6 slid in at No. 2 with $36 million, Interstellar dropped to No.3 with $29.2 million, followed by Beyond the Lights with $6.5 million, Gone Girl with $4.6 million, St. Vincent with $4 million, Fury with $3.8 million, Ouija with $3 million, and Birdman with $2.5 million.

[Image via Universal Pictures]