Two Guys Recreated the 'Dumb and Dumber' Mini Bike Road Trip

There's a moment in one of the greatest comedy films of all time, "This is Spinal Tap," in which the band's manager is explaining why their idiotic, sophomoric album cover got rejected by the record company but another artist's idiotic, sophomoric cover got approved. And when the lead singer understands the difference he says, "There's a fine line between clever and stupid." 

I mention this because there is no greater example of a piece of pop culture art balancing itself right on that fine line than the Farrelly Brothers' 1994 classic Dumb and Dumber. In fact, the movie proudly grabs hold of that line and lovingly embraces it as it rolls from one side to the other. Which makes it one of the most polarizing comedies of its era. Or any era. Like I've done with all movies I love, I carefully waited until I thought my boys were age appropriate for it and excitedly introduced it to them. They lasted maybe 15 minutes of stone faced, laugh-free viewing before breaking the silence with a "Dad, what is up with this?" And tapped out somewhere around the time Lloyd taped Petey the Parakeet's head to his dead body and traded him to Billy the blind kid. Which actually made the film 1-for-4, .250 in our family, since their mom hated it before they were even born. They inherited my sense of humor about a lot of things, but Dumb and Dumber appreciation is not in their DNA. 

Well fortunately, there are still hundreds of millions of good, decent, red-blooded, Harry and Lloyd-fearin' people still out there. Two of whom just recreated one of the most iconic set pieced in the film, the cross country mini bike sequence:

Source - What would it actually be like to make that journey, on that bike, with two grown men on board? All it took was three adults with adolescent minds and higher ups with enough, ahh, “vision” to say yes to the project. With a green light from our benevolent bosses, I helped Ari fabricate as exact a replica as we could of the machine used in the movie (that article is coming next week) and our CTXP producer, Spenser, dove into researching the roads that Lloyd and Harry would have taken. Soon we had a running, street-legal replica (thank you, Arizona) and a route to follow. ...

Eventually we squeezed onto the weensy machine and set off. The rider triangle is more accommodating than it looks, thanks to Ari stretching the frame to match the movie bike. The seat, on the other hand, is worse than it looks and the paint-shaker vibration rattled our joints to numbness. Ari had predicted that the novelty of the bike and the journey would wear off after about 15 minutes on the road, but I’m not sure it even lasted that long. It was overcast and frigid, with no scenery in any direction. We rode along miles of barbed-wire fence, punctuated occasionally by a gate or a sign warning us not to trespass. On some motorcycles, the thought of open pasture might be appealing, but aboard our hog it was exciting enough just staying on the straight and narrow.

The saga continues from there, as you can imagine with such a monumental undertaking. I suggest you read it for yourself because it is an epic tale of endurance, logistics and mini bike maintenance that is a tribute to the human spirit. It serves as an inspirational example of what people are capable of when they're motivated by the desire to waste their time and resources paying tribute to a 27 year old goofy comedy. And to entertain people on YouTube. That takes will, drive, and an utter lack of common sense that should be applauded by us all.

 And I cannot honor these intrepid souls any better than with Harry Dunne's own words, that they themselves speak so brilliantly. "Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!" Thanks, gents. And godspeed.