Plot
Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) are two good-natured, though incredibly inept best friends and roommates who share an apartment in Providence. One day while Lloyd is working as a limo driver, he picks up Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) who is on her way to the airport. When inquired where she is going, she mentions she is flying to Aspen and Lloyd immediately develops a crush on her. After dropping her off, he notices her leaving a briefcase in the airport terminal and rushes to return it only to fail and to lose his job in the process. Meanwhile, Harry, who is a dog groomer loses his job when he feeds a caravan of animals junk food on their way to a dog show. Later that night, after he is robbed of their food and remaining money by a little old lady, Lloyd suggests they leave Providence and start a new life in Aspen, and while hesitant to the idea, Harry sees how deeply interested Lloyd is in doing this and agrees. Unbeknownst to the pair, however, Mary Swanson's husband has been kidnapped and the suitcase Lloyd now has contains ransom money; the kidnappers receive word that Lloyd and Harry have the money and kill Harry's bird Petey in retaliation. As they are leaving, Lloyd scores a little extra cash by selling some of their things including Petey to a blind kid who is convinced that the dead bird is very quiet, much to Harry's horror and amusement.
Enroute to Aspen, Lloyd manages to trick a bullying trucker into paying for their meals at a rest stop, and innocently allow a police officer to drink urine from an open container of beer that Lloyd had to urinate in when Harry refused to stop (fearful of retaliation from the trucker and his friends). Later, Harry and Lloyd pick up one of the kidnappers, Mental, posing as a hitchhiker as well as a family of Hispanic travelers who drive him crazy singing "Mockingbird" non-stop until they arrive at a gas station. Learning Mental has a penchant for avoiding spicy foods, Harry and Lloyd spike his food with hot peppers until he collapses from his sensitivity, inadvertently giving him rat poison pills intended for them instead of his heart medication and killing him.Later Lloyd accidentally gets turned on the incorrect route while Harry is asleep, which infuriates him when they arrive in Nebraska instead of Colorado. But Lloyd redeems himself by trading in Harry's van for a minibike which takes them all the way to Aspen. Lloyd recognizes Mary in a newspaper promoting a fundraiser dinner, and the two find the suitcase has a lot of money in it, and immediately spend it lavishly. Renting a massive suite at the hotel, buying expensive cars and clothes including a pair of candy-colored outfits to wear to the formal. Lloyd is too nervous however to approach Mary and asks Harry to introduce them, but he unintentionally charms Mary who mistakes Harry's stupidity for intentional humor and they arrange a date to go skiing without Lloyd's knowledge. When Lloyd discovers that he's been stood up and his best friend is dating Mary he sabotages Harry's dinner date with her and goes in her place. When Nicholas, a family friend of the Swansons and secret mastermind behind Bobby's kidnapping discovers Harry and Lloyd spent all of his ransom money, he holds Lloyd and Mary hostage. Harry arrives and is apparently shot dead by him, but as he is about to kill Lloyd, Harry regains consciousness and helps send Nicholas into the hands of the authorities as part of a sting operation. Mary and Bobby are reunited and they give Lloyd and Harry special thanks for helping them.
However, their lavish lifestyle is taken away from them, as Harry and Lloyd had spent the FBI's money and they leave Aspen on foot. Eventually coming across a bus load of Hawaiian Tropic bikini models looking for two towel boys to hire. Oblivious to the possibilities, Harry and Lloyd direct them to the nearest town, exclaiming how lucky two guys are going to be to have that opportunity as they continue on toward the horizon.
Read more about this topic: Dumb And Dumber
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)