While the Farrelly brothers comedy is cemented in the zeitgeist as one of the greatest comedies, Daniels kept a contrary time capsule of sorts.
It’s hard to believe there was a time when Dumb and Dumber was considered bad by viewers. Even though the Jim Carrey/Jeff Daniels Farrelly brothers comedy is considered a classic now (and both critics and audiences alike would rank the movie as one of the greatest comedies of all time), Jeff Daniels has kept proof that the movie wasn’t universally loved when it was first released. Daniels has even spoken before about making the transition from movies like Gettysburg to something like Dumb and Dumber, where he thought the toilet scene would end his career.
However, According to Variety, Daniels has now revealed that not only did he read a large number of bad reviews, but he clipped them and saved them in a scrapbook. The Arachnophobia star told The Guardian,
I have a theatre company in Michigan so I put on a preview. 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 professes that even his agents warned him against taking the part, citing that he was a dramatic actor and he would be ruining his name. Plus, at the time, Jim Carrey hadn’t become a household name yet (which also led to New Line Cinema getting him at a steal since it was filmed prior to Ace Ventura‘s release). The Newsroom star insisted on trying his hand at comedy, “But my agents didn’t want me to do the film. 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 recalled Daniels’ audition with Carrey, “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.’ We said: ‘Great. Tell the studio.’ Jim called and said he wanted Jeff.”
