Jeff Daniels revealed in an interview with The Guardian that he saved 200 reviews that panned “Dumb & Dumber,” his 1994 buddy comedy with Jim Carrey about two dimwitted friends who drive cross-country to return a briefcase full of a money that was actually left as a ransom. Critics were not kind to the movie, but it became a classic nonetheless with $247 million worldwide.
“I have a theatre company in Michigan so I put on a preview,” Daniels said. “I was sat next to my parents and when we got to the toilet scene, my father hung his head in his hands and said: ‘No, Jeffrey …’ Meanwhile 5,000 people fell out of their chairs laughing. The reviews were horrible though. I still have a scrapbook of 200 newspapers panning the movie and wishing it never existed. Then we were the box office No. 1 for six straight weeks. That’s when it hit me that we’d done the impossible.”
Daniels was known as a dramatic actor at the time he was cast in “Dumb & Dumber,” which was an intentional choice as he wanted to flex his comedy chops. “But my agents didn’t want me to do the film,” he explained. “They said: ‘There’s a chance Jim Carrey will wipe you off the screen.’ I said: ‘Maybe – but not if I work with him.’ And that’s what I did. I remember thinking: ‘It’s either going to be such a bad career move I’ll never work again, or it just might be funny.’”
Peter Farrelly directed the movie from a script he wrote with his brother, Bob, and they remembered the studio not wanting to even meet Daniels for the role.
“Jim read with him and said: ‘That guy scared the shit out of me. I was on my heels the whole time. That’s got to be the guy,’” the duo told The Guardian. ‘We said: ‘Great. Tell the studio.’ Jim called and said he wanted Jeff.”
Daniels told USA Today last year that the “Dumb & Dumber” script was not in line with the “serious actor” his agents wanted him to be at the time.
“I had agents, who weren’t wrong, telling me, ‘You’re a serious actor. This is not the direction you need to be going. We’re going to stop this and get you off this movie,’” Daniels said at the time. “But I wanted to shake it up with a comedy. And I wanted to work with Jim Carrey.”
His agents specifically feared one of the film’s most disgusting and memorable set pieces, in which Daniels’ Harry unknowingly drinks a laxative-spiked tea and ends up having a blowout on the toilet. The actor knew such a scene would be a make-or-break moment for his career.
“It’s one thing to read the toilet scene, but then the day comes, and we’re actually going to do the toilet scene,” Daniels said. “I told Jim [Carrey], ‘This is either the beginning of my career or the end of it.’ Jim, who is fearless, told me, ‘It’s going to be great. You’ve just got to go all the way with it.’”
Daniels and Carrey would reprise their characters in the 2014 sequel “Dumb and Dumber To.” Despise their 1994 original earning bad reviews, it launched an entire franchise that would go on to include not only the sequel but also an animated TV series on ABC and a 2003 prequel, “Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.”
