After playing an elaborate 20-year practical joke, Lloyd and Harry (Carrey and Daniels) are back in the streets together, causing mayhem everywhere. With kidney failure, Harry's last hope is to find the child he never knew he had with the slutty Fraida (Turner). So off they go to meet the now 23-year-old Fanny (Melvin), raised by a Nobel-winning scientist (Tom) and his second wife (Holden), who's conniving with the handyman (Riggle) to steal his fortune. Everyone converges at a brainiac convention in El Paso that's a riot of mistaken identity, physical slapstick and staggering idiocy.

Oddly, there's the whiff of a terrific comedy in this script, with clever plot chaos and some wonderfully deranged characters, but Carrey and Daniels play everything so broadly that it's impossible to engage with a single scene. Some antics are vaguely humorous, and there's a nice stream of warped throwaway gags, but it's both far too over-the-top and directed in a style that's surprisingly clunky.

Audiences who want to watch something agonisingly stupid will laugh from start to finish, while everyone else will wonder who thought any of this was even remotely funny. But the actors indulge in some cleverly zingy wordplay, and there are some riotous set-pieces. Carrey and Daniels perform their roles as flailing puppets, while almost everyone else plays it straight. But there's no one to root for.

The story's twists and turns are blatantly obvious, as is the fact that anything nasty that happens along the way will be played purely for laughs. So there's no real reason to be interested. All we can do is hang on in the hope that something smart and funny might flit across the screen. It happens from time to time, but not nearly often enough to make this a classic. Except that, like the first movie, it's so inane that it can't help but become one.

themes, language, violence, vulgarity

15.Dec.14