It's worth noting, though, that a few important things have changed about dumb comedy, and our attitudes towards it, since Jerry Lewis's time.

The only serious danger, I think, in the current vogue for dumb comedy is that the stupid, guilty, childish pleasures it provides could become norms, even ideals.

In a marketplace dominated by action films, special effects and aggressively dumb comedy, would audiences respond to a leisurely stroll through 30 years of a high school teacher's life?

Compared with the recent glut of dumb, dumber and dumbest comedies, Brooks's pic seems positively understated.

Smart people, dumb comedy: it's a weird dichotomy.

The schism between the privileged and the penniless is too immediate to be subjected to dumb comedy.

In the world of big, dumb comedies, much more star-based, their kind of picture tends to get lost.

There were no B movies, no dumb comedies, no mindless star vehicles?

"They may call these dumb comedies, but we have smart people watching them," Mr. Dugan said.