ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This weekend's box office winner was "Dumb And Dumber To." That's to, spelled T-O. Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey are back as Harry and Lloyd, a sequel to their hit movie - their 1994 hit movie. NPR pop-culture blogger Linda Holmes says these old properties come back to life not because of a lack of creativity, but because we have a nostalgic sweet spot.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: We frequently lament the possibility that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Call this debate "Swallows And Capistrano 2: The Return." It comes up on occasions like this weekend, when the "Dumb And Dumber" sequel proved that fads may come and go, but you should always feature your catheter joke in the trailer.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DUMB AND DUMBER TO")
JIM CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) We'll get the nurse to take the catheter out of me.
JEFF DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) We don't need nurses for that.
CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) But don't you have to - (screaming).
HOLMES: But one person's pointless recycling is often another person's reunion with an old friend. HBO recently debuted a second season of the Lisa Kudrow comedy series, "The Comeback," which ran its first season in 2005. It was brilliant, weird, low-rated and doomed, a common constellation of traits on TV. And while its new ratings don't suggest it's suddenly gained mainstream appeal, its revival has been mostly lauded. Remakes, returns revivals, all of these things can seem lazy and pointless until the itch being scratched is yours, until it is your favorite show coming back, until it is your favorite movie getting a sequel. Social media is often a fire hose of contempt for new, old things.
But the announcement that Showtime would air nine new episodes of "Twin Peaks" made large swaths of Twitter feel like a loose mob of sobbing lottery winners. It's true that never-ending franchises and efforts to reanimate the corpses of dead projects can feel like space fillers made to reduce the risks inherent in anything new. But it's also true that nostalgia does not follow neatly behind quality. There's more to the desire to visit with characters again then how artfully they were created, just like there's more to wanting to see old friends than their lists of tangible virtues.
Sure, nobody needs "Dumb And Dumber To," but nobody needs most things. And this weekend, for good or for ill, visiting with Harry and Lloyd again was what $38 million worth of ticket buyers wanted.
SIEGEL: That's our pop-culture blogger Linda Holmes. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
