My title is a quote from a scene in the courtroom after both Mr. Rietti and Mr. Tuttle have switched their names and roles for the trial, where Mr. Tuttle (posing as Rietti) remains standing after the first time and right before the second time Tuttle as Rietti is told by the judge to sit down.
I have to admit, the reason is idiotic why Rietti (Sienfeld's Michael Richards) and Tuttle (Dumb and dumber's Jeff Daniels) swap identities for the courtroom. Lawyer Mr. Tuttle is mistakenly told by his boss that all he has to do is go to small town Paradise Bluff, NV and request a continuance, and then he can come home and marry his boss's daughter, played by Alexandra Wentworth as another typical 1990s style snobby L. A. woman (types who have appeared in countless 1990s movies and have no objections to sneering down at anyone beneath their social status (Rietti is an example of one who Alexandra sneers down on in this movie)). The defendant (Rip Torn) that Tuttle is sent to Paradise Bluff to request the continuance on is a relative of Alexandra and her dad (like a cousin or brother, and Alexandra's uncle, I suppose).
First upon arrival in Paradise Bluff, Mr. Rietti shows up with a few of his buddies for a bachelor party and they take Mr. Tuttle to the town bar to get plastered (why they couldn't have made the smarter choice to have done that on the evening after Tuttle went to court was obviously because we then wouldn't have had our main plot of the movie with the switched identities). Tuttle meets Charlize Theron for the first time as a bar waitress who particularly suggests getting him a Paradise Manhattan (named that because they're just Manhattans but are being served in a town named Paradise Bluff). I know he was drinking, but it was still utterly stupid how Tuttle chimed in on two local roughnecks getting into a fight over who's the owner of a slot machine winnings, and they then both punched Tuttle out. After that (supposedly a doctor saw them between these scenes), Rietti tells Tuttle back in their hotel room to rest, sober up, and to take prescribed painkillers for his assualt injury. Rietti tells him to take one every 3 hours. But Tuttle mistakenly takes 3 every one hour (nobody's too drunk to not see that taking 3 percosets or hydrocodones every hour is the stupidly wrong choice), and he ends up by the morning being so completely hopped up, just laying there looking like a dumb cow with a stupid grin. He can't even stand up or repeat the simple line he was supposed to say in court (Rietti: "repeat after me, 'your honor,'". Tuttle: "'my honor"'). When Tuttle's first waking up high on opiates, he says "My son, he has many cattle", all spaced out with that very dumb cow grin.
Tuttle hyperventilates when first hearing about Rietti impersonating him in court, and how prosecutor Jessica Stien refused the continuance, and how Rietti has to keep impersonating him (extremely carefully) or they'll be caught and prosecuted for fraud. During his panic attack, Tuttle meets Theron again and finds out that she also works as a waitress at the hotel as well as the town bar.
Now, as dumb as the set-up is to where the two men trade places, some of the courtroom scenes were quite funny and enjoyable, largely due to 1) the funny dialogue in court by Rietti, 2) Rietti bringing in people to help who were grossly inexperienced (the nutritional "expert" (Jennifer Coolage) was very flakey, and the "doctor" looked like he was still in highschool). 3) Rietti's flawed theory of sugar leading the defendant (Rip Torn) to be incapable of being able to tell right from wrong (Neither Rietti or Coolage understood the chemical structured differences between sugar and cocaine (Prosecutor Stien explains the differences in atom structure between the two, and Coolage's response is "well, how big is an atom?", then Stien tells her (sarcastically) "you must be brilliant in other ways too, can you also bend spoons?")). Then, 4) there was the humorous ways of Tuttle trying to quietly lead Rietti to say the right things in the courtroom (lots of funny "objection!" "sustained" "overrulled" lines), him first showing flashcards, and eventually Tuttle getting thrown out of the courthouse because he fell through the ceiling from an overhead duct pipe, quite funny. 5) Austin Peddleton as the judge was quite amusing too. I remember him playing a similar type of character in 1980s movie "Short circuit" as a scientist. Both of his roles, here and in "Short circuit", he plays a short tempered yet goofy character. 6) Rip Torn as the defendant, he was obviously a guilty character, yet insistant on trying to right every wrong he has done in his years of being a fraudulent salesman (selling customers pennys for $17, but saying that they're valuable copper engraving of Lincoln (how he was able to fool his customers until after he had their money, the movie didn't explain). Rip does give a sentimental yet funny speech on the stand near the end of the movie.
A couple other dumb bits (besides Tuttle not being able to go to court to request a continuance because of him drunkenly interfering with fighting hoodlums and then taking a whole bottle of Percesets) were Rietti's overly desperate attempts to make the moves on Stien, first in the bar on Tuttle's bachelor party night, then in Stien's office (i.e. Rietti putting his hand on Stien's shoulder, Stien not liking it, and Rietti replying by saying that he doesn't like the barrier between them on human contact), Rietti really didn't understand the rules of appropriate behavior between a lawyer and prosecuting attorney, let alone between a man and woman (and that was besides the fact that he was impostering an attorney, a felony to do that in the courtroom during a trial). I also didn't care for the part where Tuttle was sitting in his car outside the courthouse communicating via walky talkies, and Tuttle was supposed to honk out the correct signals so Rietti would know when to object in court. But then he makes another one of his several stupid moves in this movie, he just gets up and walks away from all of it just because he sees Theron pull up. Never mind how much he was freaking out throughout the movie til then on getting through this trial. Suddenly in that moment, it meant nothing to him? And the third stupid move he made was a little earlier in the courtroom when he suddenly jumps up yelling hysterically "I object!!! I object!!!", getting him thrown out of there. It doesn't make sense, he knew that they all thought he wasn't a lawyer and that he couldn't object, and he knew that even a lawyer can't just start screaming hysterically in a courtroom. It was just dumb.
I did though like a few of the romantic scenes between him and Theron, and am glad that he ended up choosing her over Alexandra and her snobbery.
Anyway, a funny movie in many parts, a few dumb parts, I give this a 7.
I have to admit, the reason is idiotic why Rietti (Sienfeld's Michael Richards) and Tuttle (Dumb and dumber's Jeff Daniels) swap identities for the courtroom. Lawyer Mr. Tuttle is mistakenly told by his boss that all he has to do is go to small town Paradise Bluff, NV and request a continuance, and then he can come home and marry his boss's daughter, played by Alexandra Wentworth as another typical 1990s style snobby L. A. woman (types who have appeared in countless 1990s movies and have no objections to sneering down at anyone beneath their social status (Rietti is an example of one who Alexandra sneers down on in this movie)). The defendant (Rip Torn) that Tuttle is sent to Paradise Bluff to request the continuance on is a relative of Alexandra and her dad (like a cousin or brother, and Alexandra's uncle, I suppose).
First upon arrival in Paradise Bluff, Mr. Rietti shows up with a few of his buddies for a bachelor party and they take Mr. Tuttle to the town bar to get plastered (why they couldn't have made the smarter choice to have done that on the evening after Tuttle went to court was obviously because we then wouldn't have had our main plot of the movie with the switched identities). Tuttle meets Charlize Theron for the first time as a bar waitress who particularly suggests getting him a Paradise Manhattan (named that because they're just Manhattans but are being served in a town named Paradise Bluff). I know he was drinking, but it was still utterly stupid how Tuttle chimed in on two local roughnecks getting into a fight over who's the owner of a slot machine winnings, and they then both punched Tuttle out. After that (supposedly a doctor saw them between these scenes), Rietti tells Tuttle back in their hotel room to rest, sober up, and to take prescribed painkillers for his assualt injury. Rietti tells him to take one every 3 hours. But Tuttle mistakenly takes 3 every one hour (nobody's too drunk to not see that taking 3 percosets or hydrocodones every hour is the stupidly wrong choice), and he ends up by the morning being so completely hopped up, just laying there looking like a dumb cow with a stupid grin. He can't even stand up or repeat the simple line he was supposed to say in court (Rietti: "repeat after me, 'your honor,'". Tuttle: "'my honor"'). When Tuttle's first waking up high on opiates, he says "My son, he has many cattle", all spaced out with that very dumb cow grin.
Tuttle hyperventilates when first hearing about Rietti impersonating him in court, and how prosecutor Jessica Stien refused the continuance, and how Rietti has to keep impersonating him (extremely carefully) or they'll be caught and prosecuted for fraud. During his panic attack, Tuttle meets Theron again and finds out that she also works as a waitress at the hotel as well as the town bar.
Now, as dumb as the set-up is to where the two men trade places, some of the courtroom scenes were quite funny and enjoyable, largely due to 1) the funny dialogue in court by Rietti, 2) Rietti bringing in people to help who were grossly inexperienced (the nutritional "expert" (Jennifer Coolage) was very flakey, and the "doctor" looked like he was still in highschool). 3) Rietti's flawed theory of sugar leading the defendant (Rip Torn) to be incapable of being able to tell right from wrong (Neither Rietti or Coolage understood the chemical structured differences between sugar and cocaine (Prosecutor Stien explains the differences in atom structure between the two, and Coolage's response is "well, how big is an atom?", then Stien tells her (sarcastically) "you must be brilliant in other ways too, can you also bend spoons?")). Then, 4) there was the humorous ways of Tuttle trying to quietly lead Rietti to say the right things in the courtroom (lots of funny "objection!" "sustained" "overrulled" lines), him first showing flashcards, and eventually Tuttle getting thrown out of the courthouse because he fell through the ceiling from an overhead duct pipe, quite funny. 5) Austin Peddleton as the judge was quite amusing too. I remember him playing a similar type of character in 1980s movie "Short circuit" as a scientist. Both of his roles, here and in "Short circuit", he plays a short tempered yet goofy character. 6) Rip Torn as the defendant, he was obviously a guilty character, yet insistant on trying to right every wrong he has done in his years of being a fraudulent salesman (selling customers pennys for $17, but saying that they're valuable copper engraving of Lincoln (how he was able to fool his customers until after he had their money, the movie didn't explain). Rip does give a sentimental yet funny speech on the stand near the end of the movie.
A couple other dumb bits (besides Tuttle not being able to go to court to request a continuance because of him drunkenly interfering with fighting hoodlums and then taking a whole bottle of Percesets) were Rietti's overly desperate attempts to make the moves on Stien, first in the bar on Tuttle's bachelor party night, then in Stien's office (i.e. Rietti putting his hand on Stien's shoulder, Stien not liking it, and Rietti replying by saying that he doesn't like the barrier between them on human contact), Rietti really didn't understand the rules of appropriate behavior between a lawyer and prosecuting attorney, let alone between a man and woman (and that was besides the fact that he was impostering an attorney, a felony to do that in the courtroom during a trial). I also didn't care for the part where Tuttle was sitting in his car outside the courthouse communicating via walky talkies, and Tuttle was supposed to honk out the correct signals so Rietti would know when to object in court. But then he makes another one of his several stupid moves in this movie, he just gets up and walks away from all of it just because he sees Theron pull up. Never mind how much he was freaking out throughout the movie til then on getting through this trial. Suddenly in that moment, it meant nothing to him? And the third stupid move he made was a little earlier in the courtroom when he suddenly jumps up yelling hysterically "I object!!! I object!!!", getting him thrown out of there. It doesn't make sense, he knew that they all thought he wasn't a lawyer and that he couldn't object, and he knew that even a lawyer can't just start screaming hysterically in a courtroom. It was just dumb.
I did though like a few of the romantic scenes between him and Theron, and am glad that he ended up choosing her over Alexandra and her snobbery.
Anyway, a funny movie in many parts, a few dumb parts, I give this a 7.